Meta Data Center Opens Path to $30/Hour Jobs

Thousands of construction workers are arriving in Richland Parish, Louisiana, where farms cover much of the land, to build Meta’s largest-ever data center. Less than an hour away, students are learning skills for the jobs that may follow. Whether those jobs lift working families or simply pass through town depends on decisions still being made.

The project, called Hyperion, covers nearly 10 million square feet. Meta says more than 7,500 trade workers will be on-site at peak construction and that the completed center will support 1,000 operational jobs. In a parish where agriculture remains a major industry and there’s no state minimum wage law, that scale of work is hard to overstate.

A Training Pipeline Takes Shape

At Louisiana Delta Community College’s West Monroe campus, the Data Center Technician program offers a four-week course costing nearly $3,700. Students can also take it at the college’s Winnsboro campus. Dan McCarty, director of Workforce Trades at the college, calls the training a bridge. “This is a stepping stone into the real world. We prepare you with a résumé. We work on every aspect of employability, safety, and technical skills.”

The inaugural class graduated in March, and IES Communications offered jobs to all 11 students. The company employs people working on Meta’s project. McCarty said the program now produces about 24 graduates a month. That’s a meaningful number in a region where opportunity has often meant leaving home.

“In the past, a lot of people, including myself, had to leave here to find the good jobs,” McCarty said. “Now they’re 30 minutes down the road.”

The curriculum covers equipment operation and workplace safety, and students can earn several certificates. In a September class, nine students listened as instructor Fletch Batchelor explained how to splice fiber-optic cables. They also practiced in a mock data center on campus, gaining hands-on experience before setting foot on a real job site.

Who Is Walking Through the Door

Eric Crowe Jr., 27, previously handled packages and drove for FedEx, where he averaged $14 an hour. He enrolled in the Data Center Technician program. “I see AI is really the future. We’re going to need data centers to house all the data,” he told Business Insider. “I feel like it will become a very lucrative job to have, and we’re going to need more of them. Why not get in now before it gets oversaturated?”

Trey Wadley, 30, has a background in the automotive industry and is interested in cybersecurity. He found the program while scrolling Facebook, which Meta owns. “As I learned more about Meta and data centers, they piqued my interest,” he said. Wadley recently welcomed a baby girl and hopes to work locally on Meta’s project. Without it, he said, he likely would have searched for jobs in Texas.

John Bradley, a broadband workforce development instructor, took a different path himself. “I chose an alternative route, which was in construction and oil fields, but if I’d have had something like this that would’ve guaranteed me a good job, good money from the get go, and I could travel if I wanted to, I would’ve loved that,” he said.

Wages, Promises, and Public Doubt

Business Insider reported in August that data-center facility managers earned median pay of $134,000, 64% higher than other facilities managers. Project managers at data-center facilities had median pay of $115,000, 12% higher than people in similar roles at other facilities. Those figures reflect the most senior roles, though, not the entry-level work most students will start with.

McCarty said entry-level positions could pay as much as $24 an hour, and graduates told him they reached $27 to $28 an hour within six months. Wadley hopes for $25 to $30 an hour. Crowe Jr. said, “Here, I could make about $25 to $30 per hour. It’s a no-brainer for lots of people to pivot.”

Richland Parish residents remain divided. Some say the data center will bring jobs and boost the local economy. Others worry about environmental effects and disruptions to daily life. Crowe Jr. and Wadley acknowledged those concerns. “I think we should focus more on solutions to how we can coexist with it,” Wadley said.

Bradley stressed that a Meta job isn’t the only goal. “It doesn’t have to be a Meta data center. You may decide, ‘Hey, I don’t want to work in data centers anymore.’ You still got banks, you still got IT departments,” he said. “You can literally go to work anywhere you want and use the same trades you learned here.”

Demand for seats has outpaced supply. McCarty said students are waiting to get in, and the college hopes to expand its offerings. “We’ve got some that are fresh outta high school, but we’ve had students up to 60 years old,” he said. “It doesn’t really matter what age you decide to get into this trade. Anyone is welcome to come in and learn it.”

Why This Matters: The Hyperion project shows how one large private investment can open a route into skilled, better-paying work for people who have been locked out of it. Entry-level wages reported at $24 to $28 an hour sit well above the $14 Crowe Jr. earned at FedEx, and in a parish without a state minimum wage, that gap carries real weight for household budgets. Richland Parish residents’ concerns about the environment and daily life deserve as much attention as the paychecks. Whether these jobs reach the families who need them, and whether the community has a voice in how the facility affects it, are questions public institutions and local accountability will need to answer, not the market alone.