If you run a crane, or you're training to, the rules aren't the mystery. What trips people up in 2026 is the paperwork behind the rules. Inspectors haven't rewritten the standard; they're just checking documentation more closely, and "I'm certified" is only half of what a compliant job site actually requires. Here's the straight version of what's expected.
The $22.3 Billion Month: Inside the Data Center Construction Starts Driving Equipment Operator Hiring
Key Takeaways
- Data center construction starts hit $22.3 billion in June 2026, the second-highest monthly total on record, per ConstructConnect. Only January 2026’s $25.5 billion ranks higher.
- Twenty-three projects broke ground in June, lifting the year-to-date start count to 116 projects.
- Year-to-date spending through June stands at $81.5 billion, already past 2025’s full-year total of $72.5 billion, and running more than three times the 2024 full-year total.
- Looking at the rest of 2026: ConstructConnect is tracking 85 data center projects in late-stage preconstruction with start dates before year-end, representing a combined $78.2 billion in planned value.
- Year to date through June, North Carolina, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan have each recorded more than $10 billion in new starts, with Virginia and Texas close behind.
- Two named megaprojects show the scale: Meta’s Richland Parish, Louisiana campus (over 7,500 jobs at peak construction) and the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Ohio (35,000 construction jobs projected).
Every one of these buildings starts the same way: somebody clears and grades several hundred acres, somebody digs the foundations and the utility runs, and somebody sets steel and equipment with a crane. Before a data center is a technology story, it’s a dirt-and-iron story, and as of this August, the dirt-and-iron phase is running at a scale the U.S. construction market has rarely seen.
Here are the numbers, and what they mean if you run equipment or are training to.
Where Things Stand This August
The most recent report available, ConstructConnect’s August 2026 data center report, covering activity through June, put construction starts at $22.3 billion in June, the second-highest monthly total ever recorded. The only bigger month was January 2026, at $25.5 billion.
Two things about that number matter more than the headline.
First, it isn’t a one-month spike. ConstructConnect reports year-to-date spending through June at $81.5 billion, which already exceeds the entire 2025 total of $72.5 billion, with half the year still to run, and is more than three times the 2024 full-year total.
Second, and this is the part that actually matters for anyone looking for work this fall, the pipeline ahead is loaded. ConstructConnect is tracking 85 data center projects in late-stage preconstruction with scheduled start dates before year-end, carrying a combined planned value of $78.2 billion. Late-stage preconstruction is the phase right before crews mobilize: design essentially settled, financing lined up. Those are jobs that need people between now and December, not concepts that might someday.
| Metric | Figure |
|---|---|
| Highest monthly starts on record (January 2026) | $25.5 billion |
| Second-highest month (June 2026) | $22.3 billion |
| Projects breaking ground in June 2026 | 23 |
| Year-to-date starts through June | 116 projects |
| Year-to-date spending through June | $81.5 billion |
| Full-year 2025 total | $72.5 billion |
| Queued to start before year-end | 85 projects / $78.2 billion |
All figures: ConstructConnect, August 2026 Data Center Report, covering activity through June 2026.
Where the Work Is
The geography has shifted away from the traditional data center corridors. Year to date through June, North Carolina, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan have each recorded more than $10 billion in new starts, with Virginia and Texas close behind. Looking at the near-term pipeline specifically, ConstructConnect reports Texas, North Carolina, Virginia, Arkansas, and Utah leading, with much of the remaining activity in Southern states including Georgia and Oklahoma and Midwest states including Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.
That’s a meaningful change for operators. These projects increasingly land in rural counties chosen for available land and power, places without a standing pool of experienced heavy equipment operators nearby.
Meta’s Richland Parish Campus, Louisiana
In July 2026, Meta announced it was expanding its Richland Parish campus to 5 gigawatts of compute capacity at a total regional investment of more than $50 billion, the largest in the company’s fleet. The company states the project will support over 7,500 jobs at peak construction and 1,000 permanent roles once operational, plus more than $1 billion in local infrastructure improvements covering roads, water, and wastewater systems.
Meta reports it has contracted more than $1.6 billion with local Louisiana businesses to date, and has committed $5 million to Louisiana Delta Community College for scholarships training local residents for data center work, with full scholarships available to Richland Parish high school graduates starting with the class of 2026. When a company puts that kind of money into building a local trade pipeline, it’s because the trained people aren’t there yet.
The PORTS-Pike Technology Campus, Ohio
The other end of the scale is in southern Ohio, where SoftBank Group and SB Energy are developing the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus, a 10 GW data center paired with 9.2 GW of new natural gas generation, at a stated $33 billion for the generation alone plus $4.2 billion in transmission.
The developers project 35,000 construction jobs and 2,500 operating roles. Construction starts in 2026, with capacity coming online in phases beginning in 2028 , meaning this is a build that runs for years, not months.
What This Work Looks Like From the Seat
A gigawatt-scale campus is, from a construction standpoint, closer to an industrial plant than an office building. The equipment phases run roughly like this:
| Phase | Typical equipment work |
|---|---|
| Site clearing and mass earthwork | Dozers, excavators, scrapers, articulated trucks moving hundreds of acres to grade |
| Utility and power infrastructure | Excavators and trenching for water, wastewater, and transmission tie-ins |
| Foundations and slabs | Excavators, compactors, and grading to tight tolerances |
| Structural and equipment setting | Mobile and crawler cranes setting steel, transformers, generators, and cooling equipment |
| Roads and site access | Graders, loaders, and paving support, often built new from the highway in |
Two features stand out against typical commercial construction. The duration is long, phased multi-gigawatt campuses build over years, as the 2026-to-2028-and-beyond schedule in Ohio shows, so a job isn’t a six-week hitch. And the earthwork volume is enormous, because these sites are frequently raw rural land where everything gets built from scratch, including the road in.
That combination favors operators who can run more than one machine. Crews on a phased site move between mass excavation, utility trenching, and finish grading as the work advances.
How to Position Yourself for It
If you’re already operating, the practical questions are mobility and breadth — whether you’ll travel to where this work is landing, and whether you can run enough different machines to stay useful across phases.
If you’re not in the trade yet, the entry point is documented training on the machines these sites actually use. ATS’s heavy equipment training program covers the earthmoving categories that dominate the first phases of a build like this, and our mobile crane training program covers the certification path for the lifting work that follows. We’ve written before about why crane operator jobs in particular have been surging behind the data center build-out and what the broader boom means for heavy equipment operators.
For specific machines, our guides to excavator training and dozer training cover what the programs include. If you’re starting cold, how to get a heavy equipment operator job with no experience walks through the first steps, and regional construction trends covers where work is concentrating. ATS also provides employment assistance to graduates.
The Bottom Line
A single month of data center starts hit $22.3 billion. The first half of 2026 hit $81.5 billion, beating all of 2025 with half a year still to go. Eighty-five more projects worth $78.2 billion are queued to start before this year is out, and two named campuses alone project a combined 42,500 construction jobs at peak.
Those projects don’t wait for the workforce to be ready. The operators who are trained and mobile when a site mobilizes are the ones who get the call.
Ready to train for the machines these projects run on? Call ATS at (800) 383-7364, check upcoming training dates, or apply online.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How much data center construction is happening in 2026?
A: Construction starts hit $22.3 billion in June 2026, the second-highest monthly total on record. Year-to-date spending through June reached $81.5 billion, already exceeding the full-year 2025 total of $72.5 billion.
Q: Where are the new data center projects being built?
A: Year to date through June, North Carolina, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan have each recorded more than $10 billion in new starts, with Virginia and Texas close behind. In the near-term pipeline, ConstructConnect reports Texas, North Carolina, Virginia, Arkansas, and Utah leading, plus significant activity in Georgia, Oklahoma, and Ohio.
Q: How many workers does a large data center project need?
A: It varies with scale. Meta states its 5 GW Richland Parish campus will support over 7,500 jobs at peak construction. The developers of Ohio’s PORTS-Pike Technology Campus project 35,000 construction jobs.
Q: What kind of equipment work do data center projects involve?
A: The early phases are heavy earthmoving, dozers, excavators, scrapers, and articulated trucks bringing large sites to grade, followed by utility trenching, foundation work, and crane work setting steel, transformers, and cooling equipment.
Q: How long does this kind of work last?
A: Gigawatt-scale campuses build in phases over multiple years. Ohio’s PORTS-Pike campus starts construction in 2026 with capacity coming online in phases beginning in 2028, which is why projects like these tend to offer longer runs of work than typical commercial jobs.
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