The First Labor-Market Signal from AI Data Centers: Skilled-Trade Payroll Before Permanent Jobs
The AI infrastructure boom is young, but it is not too young to measure its first labor-market channel. This paper studies eight high-confidence U.S. counties with AI-specific or AI-boom hyperscaler data-center milestones in 2024 and links them to BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages county-industry records through 2025 Q3. The main result is clear: the first measurable local labor signal from AI data centers is in power infrastructure work, not permanent data-center operation. In NAICS 237130, power and communication line construction, average weekly wages rise 18.6 percent relative to matched controls over event quarters 0-4, and all four contributing treated counties have positive wage effects. The result survives the main identification checks: the leave-one-county-out minimum is 13.8 percent, the estimate remains positive under treatment timing shifts of plus or minus two quarters, augmented matching on pre-boom power-line levels and wage slopes leaves a minimum effect of 11.9 percent, six placebo sectors have wage effects no larger than 2.1 percent, and a within-match randomization test gives a one-sided p=0.002. Payroll in the same industry rises 23.8 percent on average but is more dispersed. By contrast, the combined skilled-trades index is not positive, and directly AI-specific data-processing employment has only one disclosed treated-county observation. AI data centers are already visible in local labor data, but the visible channel is concentrated in grid-adjacent construction trades before permanent operating jobs appear in public employment records.