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about effort that’s more noble when it builds up the community.”

The program is costfree and supports students while they learn. It also guarantees them a job at the end of the four-week training bootcamp.

There is an overwhelming sense of gratitude coming from the first wave of participants. Most of them had worked in jobs in the service industry with no real path toward moving up or prosperity. And it captures the life-changing potential that this program has on them and their communities.

Those who have been accepted receive a guaranteed job offer from a Meta contractor partner. And after completion, they are immediately employed and assigned to work onsite at Meta’s data center construction sites. Meta funds training, tuition, airfare and lodging, and even offers a stipend while in training. No degree or prior work experience is needed — only a willingness to learn.

What changed with Meta is both speed and scale. The company launched AWA on June 8 and backed it with an initial $115 million first-year investment, described as the largest private-sector commitment to skilled trades with a job guarantee in American history.

Powell McCormick has repeatedly described the program’s target population as people boxed out of the trades not by lack of interest but by lack of a runway: people living paycheck to paycheck who can’t afford to take unpaid time off to train for a job that may or may not materialize.

“This is an opportunity for people like Uber drivers, waitresses, grocery store clerks and anyone out there who is living paycheck to paycheck,” she said at the program’s launch.

All the trainees in this fiber technician training program will earn 30 National Center for Construction Education & Research portable, industry-recognized credentials, including OSHA 10 and other construction safety certifications.

Powell McCormick put the stakes in similarly historic terms, tying AWA to the country’s earlier industrial mobilizations: “Skilled workers electrified rural America one pole at a time. They manned the factories that built the arsenal that won World War II. Now a new generation will pour the foundations and lay the fiber that secures American strength in this new age.”

The math behind that urgency is stark: The United States will need roughly 500,000 new electricians over the next two years just to support AI infrastructure buildout, according to Powell McCormick’s own estimates.

NextEra Energy CEO John Ketchum said he is proud to partner with Meta on the AWA program: “We look forward to working together with them to create opportunities to employ the skilled workforce that will build America’s energy future and strengthen our nation’s competitiveness.”

Sam Rathert of the Stoner Electric Group, a hiring partner for AWA, said that they are proud to provide opportunities for workers who are interested in the skilled trades: “Over the past couple of months, alongside our local (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) representatives, we have held three hiring events to place workers on our union-operated job sites, and we look forward to continuing to support AWA in connecting talent with skilled trade careers.” Onsite trainers Kenny Johnson of Kentucky and Johnston Wilson of Virginia said the AWA program serves as a critical engine for the modern American economy by bridging the massive labor gap in high-tech infrastructure development. “The fast-paced nature of data center construction leaves little room for on-the-job training, making the foundational skills taught in this academy essential,” said Johnson.

Both Johnson and Wilson said that by turning raw aptitude into specialized technical expertise, the program successfully democratizes access to the tech boom and injects sustainable wealth back into local communities, strengthening the domestic economy and national security from the ground up.

Salena Zito is a staff reporter and columnist for the Washington Examiner. She reaches the Everyman and Everywoman through shoeleather journalism, traveling from Main Street to the beltway and all places in between. To find out more about Salena and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS. COM