High-Speed Internet Boom Hits Low-Tech Snag: a Labor Shortage
3 94The U.S. laid fiber-optic cables to a record number of homes last year as billions of dollars in federal broadband grants and a surge in data-center construction fueled an enormous buildout, but the industry does not have enough workers to sustain the pace.
A 2024 report by the Fiber Broadband Association and the Power & Communication Contractors Association projects 58,000 new fiber jobs between 2025 and 2032 and estimates 120,000 workers will leave the field in that period, mostly through retirement -- a combined shortage of 178,000. The gap is especially acute among splicers, who fuse hair-thin filaments by hand, and directional drill operators.
Telecommunications line installers and repairers earned annual median wages of $70,500 for the year ended May 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, against a $49,500 national median. Push, a utility-construction firm, raised hourly pay for fiber crews by 5% to 8% in each of the past several years and expects the pace to quicken.
3 comments
Re:Bullshit. (Score: 5, Insightful)
by TheStatsMan ( 1763322 ) on Monday February 02, 2026 @12:20PM (#65964388)
It actually isn't. The US has been short on labor for its entire existence, and immigration is one of the only ways to keep up with the demand. The labor shortage is at the macro level, not just in one industry or sector. By increasing wages, it doesn't solve the labor shortage, it just moves it around. There isn't some vast pool of unemployed workers just waiting to be paid more.
Re:Shouldn't robots do these tasks? (Score: 5, Informative)
by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Monday February 02, 2026 @12:07PM (#65964336)
the sorts of robots that do this kind of work exist, the sorts that can do it standing in mud on the edge of some lane where the telco has a green plastic box don't exist.
It's a crap job (Score: 5, Interesting)
by ZipNada ( 10152669 ) on Monday February 02, 2026 @01:55PM (#65964634)
AT&T ran cable all through my neighborhood a couple of years ago. I got a good look at the kind of very unpleasant work it is. They use dirty, noisy tunneling machines to burrow under roads, driveways, and sidewalks. They are standing out in the weather (in this case more than 100F in the shade). It was all done by contractors. Probably there is some optical fiber somewhere that needs to be spliced, but in this case they were just pulling what looked like ordinary copper cable.
I'm very skeptical that they were getting paid $35/hr.