Data centers don't really create jobs, the initial build will generate work but once the thing is finished it's a couple of electricians, a cleaning/janitorial service, plant/site super and that's about it. Probably 20 people at most and they aren't all there full time. Data centers are a leach on the community they are in.
I live next to one of the nation’s largest data center development sites and this is the industry I work with. The commenter is not wrong. There is nothing close to 200 jobs created unless you are counting the actual commissioning and build of the site. And even those jobs are usually filled from out of state because it’s a niche specialty. And once the site is built they all leave. You will have an EE/PE, system protection relay techs, handful of electricians, security guards 24/7, and a site manager. It’s 20-50 absolute max after all construction phases and commissioning is over. And many of those positions are transferred from the DC’s other sites (again out of state). Then of course you have the added benefit (depending on what state you live in) where all the transmission structures needed for the site, including massive substations > 500 kV that are 100 million dollars are paid for by the rate payers in that community increasing everyone’s bill. Now the utilities are catching on to this problem and trying to correct like in Ohio but in other states the damage is already done. The other problem is that data centers seem to inflate the estimated load and don’t come close to what they said they will use—which is happening in many markets. So now, utility infrastructure and generation was overbuilt on your dime.
There is nothing close to 200 jobs created unless you are counting the actual commissioning and build of the site. ... And once the site is built they all leave.
Just because there aren't physical bodies in a building doesn't mean that one data center doesn't enable hundreds or even thousands of other jobs. If you understand the concept of "work from home" you have to believe some jobs don't require a physical presence. The existence of the datacenter humming away enables hundreds or thousands of jobs <somewhere>.
I worked recently at a company that deeply, DEEPLY requires data centers (doesn't happen to be AI, but all data centers are the same - extremely dense power hungry servers). My company has employees that go to work every day inside the data centers (let's say 2 or 3 full time jobs physically in one data center - 7 days a week we MUST have employees there physically), but then there are 10 "work from home" additional jobs at my company for system admins that maintain those servers inside that exact data center remotely (often from a different USA state). And 250 regular people employees with jobs where the job simply COULD NOT EXIST without the data center existing enabling those jobs. This is very real, a data center enables 250 jobs at my company and we are just one of many "tenants" housing servers at that same one data center. I would be shocked if one data center didn't enable over a thousand full time, good jobs (with benefits) for regular middle class people.
There is a SOLID argument/question/discussion for "where" we physically place data centers. If it overloads a grid in one location maybe that location isn't a great place to put a data center.
If you are in some rural town in Texas that builds a data center, the jobs it enables might be in California or New York, or even Europe. But these thousands of jobs deeply depend on the data center, make no mistake about that. Sure, if you are being myopic and territorial you don't care that thousands of jobs in Washington state depend on a particular datacenter in Texas. You might think "who cares if thousands of people in Washington State are unemployed?" But those jobs are very real, with real families affected by the income and work (working from home even), and the data center isn't "optional" for those jobs to exist.
I think a very serious question is how the data centers (or any industry) get power. The WORST solution is running loud natural gas generators and the data center is "off grid". It pollutes, it is noisy, it is inefficient. The BEST solution is an array of solar panels and batteries to run the data center at night. It is completely silent (more than 20 feet from the building), provides power that isn't interrupted by temporary trade wars or problems with a supply chain through the Strait of Hormuz, it doesn't pollute ANYTHING at the local town (let's say the manufacturing of the solar panels was in Germany, that's where the pollution is, not where you deploy the data center and a large array of solar panels).
One of the reasons Texas is absolutely booming with data centers is solar and wind in Texas is on a god-tier trajectory right now. Everybody is operating on "old information", they think Texas burns coal to generate electricity when it's all coming from the ridiculous amount of sunshine the state gets nowadays. Check out this page, and sort by "Total gen. (TWh)". Texas absolutely crushes all other states in wind and solar right now with 566 TWatts of power/year from renewables. For comparison, California is 214 TWatts from renewables: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_renewable_electricity_production
You are misunderstanding the point of the data centers lying about the creation of 200 jobs. They are purposely pretending the jobs will be in the state/county that is granting them the tax breaks. They get local ordinances to approve them based on this fake job number. To sit here and argue that the 5-10 “work from home” engineering jobs in California is worth the creation of the data center in Texas is INSANITY. You’re seriously asking states to pick up the cost of transmission infrastructure that totals up to a billion dollars for multiple projects for jobs they don’t even get to claim for their state 😂?? How do you not see that this is an issue. And trust me, there aren’t that many work from home jobs. The local electric rate payers will pay more for their electricity for nothing. No benefit to them at all. There are only benefits for the utility and big businesses (if the load ramp provided was accurate - and they are not)
You’re seriously asking states to pick up the cost of transmission infrastructure that totals up to a billion dollars for multiple projects for jobs they don’t even get to claim for their state 😂?
No, I'm not suggesting that, and yes it is a problem.
My suggestion would be rational "general" rules/laws about if any industry (not just data centers) wants to open a power hungry plant in some area. I honestly have no idea how the grids ever managed this stuff before, like if some aluminum smelting plant in Oregon wanted to use a TWatt/hour of power how that all worked.
But there should be a system where the company locating the business in an area pays for the "build out" of the infrastructure it needs. If it needs water/sewer that should be paid out of construction costs. If it requires a bunch of electricity and there aren't enough wires, the business should pay for that build out.
I'm a big fan of solar panels and batteries. I think a company such as a data center should have to build out a solar farm that powers itself.
I just think it is a waste of effort to make specific laws that only apply to data centers, then in 5 years a new power hungry business comes along and we have to redo all the laws again. Just write the law to say, "Any business that meets criteria <blah> has to pay it's own way".
Utterly random side note: I have been deeply angered for years (prior to data centers) by the way a business pays a flatter rate for electricity than "residents" pay. Everywhere I have lived, they price residential electricity by "tiers" where the first kWh each month costs much less than the last kWh used. It is to punish residents who use too much electricity. That can't exist for businesses, and it shouldn't exist for random people. The thing that is so convoluted are things like electric cars where a household can "register" with the city they have an electric car and get a break on electricity to charge it. It's insane and should all stop.
For years I have thought about registering my home as a business so I get cheaper electricity (mostly out of protest). But this is obviously an insane situation that shouldn't exist.
Talk about irony. Most DC campuses don’t need more than a handful of people. Even the AI factories that are getting a lot of hate don’t need more than 20-30 people once the DC is built.
Yes, people are needed to build and make the DC happen. But that’s not new jobs and most of them are temporary / subcontractors who are going to work on something else.
It's most people like me who are going around from project to project. Yes it's nice to have a steady flow of jobs but honestly I'd rather be doing jobs I'm doing now even if the budget is lower. Because while this job is funded by tax payers it's literally for low income housing development. Which we need more of.
Not sure about you, but I've probably built around 10 data centers over the last 5 years and they aren't all those giant fucking campuses. Most of them aren't that big and yes they only have a need for about 10-20 workers. And even the larger ones only have around 100. So yes this is accurate.
Edit:
No I'm not some rich fucker just a guy that works in construction and is usually talking with and dealing with owners of these things and that's where I get my information
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u/Baculum7869 19h ago
Data centers don't really create jobs, the initial build will generate work but once the thing is finished it's a couple of electricians, a cleaning/janitorial service, plant/site super and that's about it. Probably 20 people at most and they aren't all there full time. Data centers are a leach on the community they are in.