Electricians, HVAC technicians, plumbers, controls specialists and maintenance mechanics are becoming harder for hospitals to secure at the exact moment health systems need them to maintain aging infrastructure, manage rising energy costs and execute capital improvement programs.
Hospitals are not competing only with one another. Data centers, utility infrastructure, advanced manufacturing projects and other large construction programs are drawing from many of the same regional skilled-trade labor pools, and in markets with heavy infrastructure investment, those projects can offer compensation and overtime packages that make hospital work increasingly difficult to staff. That is turning skilled labor availability into something more consequential than a human resources problem. For healthcare facilities leaders, it is becoming a capital execution, energy management and resilience constraint.
St. Louis Hospitals Are Losing Electricians to a $6-an-Hour Data Center Premium
The pressure is already visible in healthcare construction. At a recent healthcare facilities summit in St. Louis, industry executives described hospitals competing directly with data centers and other megaprojects for electricians, materials and contractors. The region has roughly 4,000 electricians but demand closer to 9,000, and some data center employers are paying up to $6 or more per hour above market rate, along with premium overtime and other incentives, to pull workers away from other jobs. Mercy's executive director of facilities, planning, design and construction, Stephanie Jeffries, said historical healthcare construction benchmarks are no longer accurate, running 20% to 30% higher than in the past and forcing hospital systems into harder decisions about project scope.
Hospital and clinic construction starts are projected to climb 11.6% in 2026 to reach $30.7 billion, according to the Healthcare Financial Management Association, with hospital construction alone expected to reach $38.8 billion by 2030. Hospitals are effectively entering a labor auction they did not create, against a backdrop where nearly 30% of union electricians are nearing retirement age, according to a 2024 Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte study.
Hospital Systems Have Less Room to Delay Infrastructure Work
A commercial property owner can sometimes postpone a renovation or accept a longer construction schedule. Hospitals have far less flexibility. Ventilation, electrical systems, emergency power, cooling, boilers and building controls support clinical environments that operate continuously, and healthcare ventilation specifically is governed by specialized requirements covering airflow, filtration, outdoor air, and reserve heating and cooling capacity that do not apply to typical commercial buildings. Hospitals traditionally could treat skilled trades as something available through an internal facilities department, a contractor or a service agreement whenever needed. Increasingly, healthcare systems may have to treat access to those workers as a strategic capacity that needs to be secured before a project begins, not assumed once it does, particularly as the same trades shortage reshapes how contractors staff and price large infrastructure jobs nationally.
Energy Upgrades Compete for the Same Crews as Deferred Maintenance
The workforce constraint becomes even more consequential as hospitals try to lower energy costs and emissions. Healthcare facilities account for approximately 9% of energy consumed by U.S. commercial buildings despite representing about 4% of commercial floorspace, according to ENERGY STAR, which estimates that a typical hospital could reduce energy consumption by as much as 30% through best practices and equipment upgrades without compromising comfort or safety. But efficiency opportunities do not implement themselves. Replacing chillers, modernizing HVAC equipment, upgrading controls and preparing buildings for electrification all require many of the same workers already being recruited into data center and infrastructure construction. A hospital may have an approved energy project with favorable economics and available capital and still struggle to execute it because the contractor cannot provide the necessary crew on the original schedule. JLL estimates that as many as 2.1 million skilled-trade positions could go unfilled by 2030, spanning electricians, HVAC technicians, plumbers, pipefitters and maintenance workers, a gap the firm says could affect construction timelines, building safety, energy costs and business continuity broadly, not just in healthcare.
For hospitals, that creates an uncomfortable overlap between deferred maintenance and deferred sustainability investment: the same technician needed to replace an aging piece of equipment may also be the person needed to install the more efficient system meant to reduce future operating costs.
Labor Availability Needs to Enter Capital Planning Earlier
Healthcare facilities leaders may ultimately need to evaluate labor availability earlier in the capital planning process, asking different questions before approving a project: can the contractor actually secure qualified electricians and HVAC technicians, how exposed is the schedule to another large project starting nearby, are labor escalation assumptions built into the budget, and which projects become operationally critical if labor availability deteriorates further. Hospitals may also have to reconsider the value of their internal skilled-trades workforce.
Apprenticeships, technical-school partnerships and career pathways can look expensive when contractors are readily available; they look different once specialized labor becomes one of the constraints determining whether critical infrastructure gets maintained at all. The bidding war is unlikely to disappear simply because hospitals have essential missions.
Data centers, utilities, manufacturers and infrastructure developers have essential projects of their own, backed in many cases by enormous capital budgets and aggressive construction timelines. For healthcare facilities executives, the question is becoming less about whether skilled labor costs more, and more about whether the people required to keep the hospital reliable, efficient and ready for its next infrastructure upgrade will be available at all.
