MIKE ROWE SAID PLANO ELECTRICIANS MADE UP TO $280K

Mike Rowe said three data center electricians under 30 were pulling in $240,000 to $280,000 a year with no debt.

NewsNation reported on July 14, 2026, that Rowe said he spoke with electricians at a Texas data center, all of them under 30. A more detailed account on Yahoo Finance placed the site in Plano.

Rowe said the electricians had “as much overtime as they want” and no debt.

He also said all three had been poached three times in the prior 18 months.

Data centers are the large facilities that power AI models and other technologies. Rowe said the real hurdle is stigma around the trades. “So I’m just making that point that the stigmas and the stereotypes that need to be overcome for parents and kids to feel good about exploring these careers, they’re real,” he said.

The BlackRock stage

Rowe made the remarks at BlackRock’s 2026 Infrastructure Summit alongside CEO Larry Fink, Fortune reported.

He met the electricians during a visit to a Plano data center, and they had no college debt.

Fortune framed the story around demand for workers to build the infrastructure behind AI. That demand comes as data center construction has been outpacing transit.

Is that pay typical?

Not every data center electrician makes anything close to that. The Birmingham Group said most earn closer to $150,000.

The firm wrote that “an experienced electrician can stack solid base pay, sustained overtime, travel money, and job intensity into a total package that starts to compete with management pay.”

It added a warning: “Not everywhere. Not on every project. But often enough now that hiring leaders should stop treating it like an outlier.”

Whether a worker reaches $150,000 depends on market, hours, travel and project type, the firm wrote.

Classet called the $240,000 to $280,000 figure a pay package rather than a typical base wage. Long hours, overtime and per diem can all feed into totals like that, it said.

Classet also said the Plano example should not be treated as representative of all data center electricians. It pointed to the Birmingham Group’s estimate of roughly $150,000 as a typical all-in figure.

What Rowe said next

On October 2, 2026, Rowe returned to the Plano electricians in a Yahoo Finance video interview about demand for skilled labor.

This time he described them as earning “well over $200,000 a year” and said they were all under 30.

“The headline is all three of them had been poached three times in the preceding 18 months,” Rowe said.