As the needs and demands of our digital, data-driven society continue to evolve at an exceedingly rapid pace, our industry has to contend with quite a few gaps—from infrastructure capacity and capabilities to the availability of space and utilities—to manage growing pains.
One of these gaps surrounds the people behind it all: our workforce. In 2025, we have 300,000 vacant digital infrastructure jobs and not enough talent to fill them. Couple this surplus of available opportunities with the fact that 70 percent of our existing workforce is over the age of 45 (and 40 percent will retire in 15 years) and, our need for more people power becomes even more critical. In order to ensure our industry remains globally competitive, sustainable, and future-ready—not to mention capable of meeting the technological, economic, social, and environmental needs society demands of us—we need to find ways to strengthen and expand the digital infrastructure talent pipeline.
The Importance of Collaboration and Community Involvement
The significant talent gap in the digital infrastructure industry—especially with respect to data centers—is a challenge that affects us all. By pooling our resources and working together as a collaborative community, we have a much better chance of addressing it.
That ethos—and a shared vision of making digital infrastructure education visible, attainable, and inspiring to students from grade school through university—is what powered the latest collaboration between EdgeConneX, Infrastructure Masons (iMasons), and other leading global organizations.
