According to Savills latest research, the data centre industry in Europe is facing a huge labour and talent shortage which could limit the sector's ability to grow, to operate existing data centres and develop new ones.
Two factors in particular are contributing to the deficit: a number of employees are about to reach retirement age and many of the places of work are in remote and, sometimes, unappealing locations.
This could lead to limited available data centre power capacity and a reduced development pipeline in Europe which in turn will impact both data centre occupiers and landlords.
Scott Newcombe, EMEA head of data centre advisory at Savills, said: 'A lack of available talent could put pressure on rental growth due to the anticipated increase in data consumption, combined with a lack of supply.
'Data centre occupiers are faced with increasing costs as they try to attract and retain talent which could negatively affect profit margins. Landlords will be mostly impacted by higher development costs due to higher labour construction costs.'
Savills believes that more mature FLAP-D markets (Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Dublin) are better placed than developing ones.
Bram de Rijk, European research associate at Savills, says: 'The established markets will grow the strongest, driven by the presence of existing talent and talent producing institutions.
'On a European level, Italy, Spain, and the Nordic countries, except for Norway, are forecast to see their international bandwidth usage increase by a minimum of 30% per year until 2029.
'However, the number of available data centre professionals is limited, and there is a lack of new talent for the sector currently coming out of universities in these markets.'
According to Savills, the sector may be able to source new employees from freed-up and untapped talent pools in the coming years by narrowing the gender inequality gap, investing in advertising, campaigning at universities, tapping into recently laid-off tech workers, and by implementing automation and AI.
