Meta is committing $115 million this year to provide free training and a guaranteed job upon the program’s completion. The company is covering all the costs for the five-week program, from tuition to housing to a daily training stipend. No prior experience is necessary, and the training is open to everyone from recent grads to people making a career pivot.
“America’s Workforce Academy is our commitment to building that workforce with the same ambition and long-term thinking we bring to the technology itself,” said Rachel Peterson, Meta’s vice president of data centers. “America needs hundreds of thousands of skilled tradespeople—electricians, mechanics, fiber technicians, and more—and this program creates clear, accessible pathways into those careers.”
The academy’s graduates will earn an industry-recognized National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER) credential and an America’s Workforce Certificate. The average salary for a data center technician is $54,031, according to ZipRecruiter. Meta did not respond to Fortune’s questions about how many people the academy plans to train or the salary ranges of the guaranteed positions with contractors building out Meta’s data network.
“The AI revolution is bringing change but also historic opportunities. Skilled workers electrified rural America one pole at a time. They manned the factories that built the arsenal that won World War II,” Dina Powell McCormick, Meta’s president and vice chairman, said in a statement. “Now a new generation will pour the foundations and lay the fiber that secures American strength in this new age.”
“I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’ It was miles long, miles wide, and very high. It literally covered most of the island,” Trump said.
The company has also argued that training Americans in skilled trades is essential to competing with China’s AI capacity.
“America needs an estimated $10 trillion in infrastructure investment by 2033 to modernize aging systems and build new energy, digital, and AI infrastructure,” CEO Larry Fink said in March. “Capital alone is not enough—people are central to building our nation’s future.”
