As a Detroit-based apprentice electrician, Tyler Shelton usually spends his days climbing into manholes to repair cables and other electrical equipment. Recently, though, his employer has begun diverting crews to a massive new data center rising about an hour outside the city.

“Everybody wants that money,” Shelton said in a recent interview with The New York Times. The jobs pay well, but they are also draining the workforce from regular assignments, he said. As more workers head to data centers, Shelton’s crew is left trying to cover the same volume of maintenance and repair work with fewer hands. READ MORE