Data Center Starts Hit $98.5 Billion Through August. The Jobs Got Bigger.

Data center construction starts reached $98.5 billion across 153 projects in the first eight months of 2026, according to ConstructConnect's October data center report, released September 29. That already exceeds the $72.5 billion the sector started in all of 2025 and is more than triple the 2024 total. August alone accounted for $14.4 billion across 17 project starts. January remains the record month for starts at $25.5 billion, with June second at $22.3 billion.

The average is the more consequential number. A data center breaking ground in 2026 carries an average construction value of $1.18 billion and covers roughly 707,000 square feet. The 2025 comparables were $507.4 million and 493,000 square feet. Cost density moved with it: after outliers are removed, the median build runs $541 per square foot and the average $867, with individual projects ranging from under $300 to more than $2,200. Data centers now account for 24 percent of all nonresidential building starts in the United States.

Fewer and larger projects change how electrical work gets scheduled and staffed. A build at that average value is a multi-year assignment with continuous electrical scope rather than a short rough-in followed by demobilization. The sequence runs through medium-voltage distribution, substation and switchgear installation, busway, generator and UPS systems, grounding, and the terminations and containment that high-density racks require. A cost of $867 per square foot reflects what goes inside the building rather than the shell, and electrical and mechanical systems carry most of that.

For commercial electricians, the shift concentrates hiring instead of spreading it. A contractor staffing one billion-dollar campus needs a larger crew in a single metro for longer, rather than small crews rotating across many sites. That raises the value of medium-voltage experience, commissioning work, and the documentation discipline these owners require at turnover. It also narrows where the jobs are. ConstructConnect identifies the heaviest concentrations of spending in the Wisconsin-to-Ohio corridor, Texas, and the Georgia-to-Virginia stretch of the eastern seaboard. The project count matters as much as the dollar figure: 153 starts nationally is fewer jobs than $98.5 billion implies, and access to the work depends on which contractor holds the campus.

The pipeline feeding those starts is no longer accelerating. The Dodge Momentum Index, which tracks nonresidential projects entering planning and leads construction spending by 12 to 18 months, slipped 0.4 percent in August to 282 and Dodge attributed the flat reading specifically to weaker data center planning. The index still sits 4.2 percent above August 2025, but commercial planning excluding data centers is down 18.9 percent year over year, which means the sector is holding the segment up by itself. Thirty-one projects valued at $100 million or more entered planning in August, among them two EdgeConneX data centers in Bastrop, Texas, at $462 million each.

Starts already in the ground will keep crews working well into 2028. What flattened in August is the work that would have followed them.