Blackstone COO Jon Gray predicts ‘huge boom’ in blue-collar jobs—his own data center company is hiring 30,000 new roles
As generative AI threatens to upend the white-collar workforce, it’s creating a surge of opportunity in one corner of the labor market: the skilled trades. That’s at least according to Jon Gray, president and chief operating officer at Blackstone—the biggest publicly-traded alternative asset manager—who predicted a “huge boom in blue-collar employment certainly over the next five years.” Speaking at the Milken Institute last week, Gray pointed to QTS, one of Blackstone’s portfolio companies, which operates or is developing more than 75 data centers worldwide. A year ago, roughly 10,000 workers were on QTS job sites. By year’s end, that number is set to quadruple to 40,000—a 300% jump. “Between the energy, the physical infrastructure, the data centers, the reindustrialization—something very powerful [is] happening,” Gray said. The boom is being fueled by a massive wave of AI infrastructure investment. According to McKinsey, global spending on data centers could reach $7 trillion by 2030, creating lucrative opportunities for electricians, pipefitters, and HVAC technicians, helping build the facilities powering the AI economy. While data centers vary in size, a single data center can be 40% to 50% larger than an average Walmart Supercenter and require up to 1,500 workers during peak construction. The average salary of construction workers on data center projects is about $81,800 annually or $39.33 an hour—roughly 32% more than those on non-data center builds—according to data from Skillit, an AI-powered hiring platform for construction workers. Fortune reached out to Blackstone for further comment. Companies are pouring millions into rebuilding the skilled trades talent pipeline Despite the demand and rising pay, filling critical skilled-trade roles hasn’t been easy for companies racing to build out AI infrastructure. An estimated 2.1 million skilled trades jobs in the U.S. could go unfilled by 2030—with potential economic losses reaching $1 trillion annual