Data centers are becoming an increasingly large part of the US economy.
But when it comes to employment, what impact do data centers have over the short and long term?
We analyzed dozens of studies and reports to better understand how many people data centers employ and how long the employment lasts.
Editor’s Picks
- The US data center industry supports 5.5 million jobs.
- By the industry’s own count, data centers directly employ 1 million Americans.
- As few as 23,000 Americans held a permanent data center job in 2024.
- About 1,500 workers are on site at the peak of a data center’s construction, but a typical facility runs with 50 full-time workers.
- About 80% of the 74,000 jobs data centers support in Virginia each year are construction jobs.
- Employment in the industry that includes data centers is projected to grow 25.1% from 2025 to 2035, 7 times faster than overall employment.
- Workers in the industry that includes data centers earn $60.78 an hour on average.
- 87% of data center professionals say workforce gaps are affecting their operations.
- Virginia’s data center tax break cost $1.94 billion in FY2025, more than $1.2 million per new job reported.
- When a data center opens, county employment rises about 3.5% over time, but rural counties see no measurable job gains.
How Many People Work in Data Centers?
The US data center industry supports 5.5 million jobs (PwC for the Data Center Coalition)
The data center industry is growing. In 2024 alone, the industry supported 5,495,100 direct, indirect, and induced jobs. That’s a 17% increase over the 4.7M jobs reported in 2023.
The figure doesn’t just reflect jobs created directly in data centers, but jobs that support the larger economy and local community. Those jobs paid $525.3 billion in labor income in 2024 alone, a 22% increase from the previous year.
This growth isn’t just data centers. It signals demand for everything from construction to utilities to manufacturing to professional services and a host of local businesses.
By the industry’s own count, data centers directly employ 1 million Americans (PwC for the Data Center Coalition)
PwC’s 2026 study for the Data Center Coalition counts data center services wherever they are produced. Direct employment exceeded 1 million workers in 2024. Food & Water Watch says that PwC’s previous study estimated direct data center employment at about 603,000 jobs in 2023.
Direct labor income reached $164.4 billion in 2024. This is equivalent to about $163,600 per direct job. This isn’t to say that each individual in the industry earns a $163,600 salary. It reflects total compensation tied to the jobs.
Data center employment grew 64% between 2016 and 2023 (US Census Bureau)
The employment increase has occurred alongside rapid expansion in the data center industry. The U.S. has now built more than 3,000 operational data centers, with an estimated 1,500 more in various stages of development.
In 2023, an estimated 501,000 data center workers were employed, up from 306,000 in 2016.
Where these data centers are being built is changing, too. An estimated 87% of data centers currently exist in urban areas, while 67% of planned facilities will be seen in more rural communities.
As few as 23,000 Americans held a permanent data center job in 2024 (Food & Water Watch)
Food & Water Watch, an environmental advocacy group, estimates that about 23,000 Americans held permanent data center jobs in 2024, representing only 0.01% of the 159.5 million nonfarm payroll jobs in the U.S. This national estimate was extrapolated using employment and data center capacity figures from Virginia rather than a direct national count.
However, the definition of a “data center job” varies widely, and estimates vary sharply. Thus, numbers can range from 23,000 permanent on-site positions to 501,000 workers and roughly 1 million workers.
At the same time, job-posting data point to rising hiring demand. In mid-2026, six out of every 1,000 job postings are tied to data centers, up from about two per 1,000 in 2023.
Payroll employment in the industry that includes data centers fell to 453,800 in September 2026 (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
The latest payroll figures suggest that hiring demand is not translating evenly into employment gains within the data center sector.
Data center-related job postings are up. However, employment in data processing, hosting, and related services (NAICS 518) hasn’t been moving as rapidly. Employment fell from 476,300 in September 2025 to 453,800 in September 2026. This is a year-over-year decline of about 4.7%. Note that these BLS payroll figures come from a different dataset and methodology than the Census employment estimate cited earlier. As such, the two data sets are not directly comparable.
The decline doesn’t necessarily mean data center hiring is in a downturn. Indeed’s job posting data indicate a continued demand for data center-related workers.
Each direct data center job supports 4.5 additional jobs elsewhere in the US economy (PwC for the Data Center Coalition)
The 4.5 additional jobs supported by each direct data center job include both indirect and induced employment. Indirect jobs come from businesses that supply data centers. This includes construction firms, utilities, equipment manufacturers, and professional services.
Depending on the source and what’s included, however, the multiplier can vary. PwC’s earlier study put it at 6.4 additional jobs per direct job. In the 2026 study, PwC estimates that each direct data center job supports 4.5 additional jobs elsewhere in the economy. This includes both operational and capital spending effects. That equals a total employment multiplier of 5.5 when the original direct job is included.
And, Microsoft projects 3.2 additional local jobs for each operations job at its Catawba County campus through 2029, while Virginia reported 2.1 additional jobs per data center job in 2025 when it excluded construction.
Construction Jobs vs. Permanent Jobs
About 1,500 workers are on site at the peak of a data center’s construction, but a typical facility runs with 50 full-time workers (Virginia JLARC)
Building a new data center requires a lot of workers across many trades. When construction wraps up, however, the number of workers required to run the center drops.
About half of the 50 workers at a typical 250,000-square-foot data center are contractors. That’s one worker per 5,000 square feet. This compares to one per 650 square feet at some distribution centers.
Data center project construction takes quite a bit of time. One building alone can take 12 to 18 months to complete. A full campus may take five years or more.
About 9,000 construction workers are on site every day at OpenAI’s Stargate campus in Abilene, Texas (KTXS)
Building a data center requires a lot of labor. The Abilene complex, in particular, is designed to span 1,100 acres, with eight buildings totaling about 4 million square feet.
The number of construction workers on site has grown fast. In September 2025, more than 6,000 workers were on site. One year later, there are about 9,000. The project is not expected to wrap up until sometime during the first quarter of 2027.
Once the campus is done, Stargate is contractually required to create 357 full-time jobs. Oracle projects the completed campus could support 1,700 permanent on-site positions.
Only a quarter of the 5,000 construction jobs at Meta’s Hyperion campus in Louisiana were expected to go to local workers (Sherwood News)
Meta’s Hyperion campus is being built in Richland Parish, Louisiana, a community of about 20,000 people where roughly a quarter of residents live below the poverty line.
More than 3,700 construction workers were on site by February 2026, with plans to reach 5,000, yet only about a quarter of those jobs were expected to go to local workers. Census data show just 5,355 employer jobs in the parish in 2023, which helps explain why the project cannot rely solely on local labor.
A regional economic development official has cited about 7,200 construction workers across the surrounding area. Because that number covers a much larger region, it can’t be directly compared with the employment count for Richland Parish alone.
GrowNELA expects local Hyperion employment to remain near 326 jobs for decades, with average salaries around $75,000. Louisiana Economic Development projects more than 800 operational jobs overall.
A Nevada data center approved for tax abatements projected 4,242 construction jobs and 73 permanent jobs (Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development)
Vantage Data Centers’ NV11 campus in Storey County, outside Reno, projects 4,242 construction jobs but only 73 permanent jobs over its first 10 years. That gap is even wider than the construction-to-operations split seen at projects such as Stargate and Meta’s Hyperion campus.
About 80% of the 74,000 jobs data centers support in Virginia each year are construction jobs (Virginia JLARC)
Construction workers represent 59,000 of the 74,000 jobs Virginia data centers support each year.
Those construction jobs generate an estimated $4.3 billion in labor income, including $2.6 billion directly tied to construction. These jobs also contribute $6.4 billion to Virginia’s GDP during just the construction phase.
Including operations and other activity, data centers contribute an estimated $9.1 billion to the state’s GDP. $4.4 billion comes from direct activity.
A Meta-formed advocacy group projects US data centers will generate 4.7 million temporary construction jobs and 697,000 permanent jobs (CBS News)
The American Edge Project, an advocacy group formed by Meta, projects that U.S. data center development could generate 4.7 million temporary construction jobs and 697,000 permanent jobs. That’s seven construction jobs for every permanent job.
There’s a similar pattern with Stargate, Hyperion, and Vantage NV11. For these projects, construction requires far more workers than long-term operations. The difference is in scale. This projection looks at future data center development across the country rather than a single project.
Anthropic’s $50 billion US data center investment is expected to create 800 permanent jobs and 2,400 construction jobs (Anthropic)
Anthropic’s $50 billion investment doesn’t necessarily translate into equally large permanent workforces. Based on 800 permanent jobs, the investment works out to about $62.5 million per permanent job, plus 2,400 construction jobs.
Amazon projects similar gaps, though at lower investment per-job ratios. Amazon’s $20 billion Pennsylvania investment is expected to create at least 1,250 jobs, or about $16 million per job.
The $18 billion investment in Louisiana, by contrast, is expected to create up to 750 full-time and 2,250 construction jobs, while supporting 2,500 additional positions.
And Amazon’s $10 billion investment in North Carolina will likely create at least 500 jobs.
Data Center Job Growth and Forecasts
Employment in the industry that includes data centers is projected to grow 25.1% from 2025 to 2035, 7 times faster than overall employment (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
The U.S. economy is projected to add about 5.9 million jobs from 2025 to 2035, including roughly 5.77 million wage-and-salary positions. Employment in the data center industry is expected to grow much faster, rising from 479,900 jobs in 2025 to 600,300 in 2035, an increase of 120,400 jobs.
That 25.1% increase compares with 3.6% growth for total wage and salary employment. That puts the data center industry at seventh for projected growth. The Bureau of Labor Statistics points to artificial intelligence (AI) as a major reason for the increase.
Direct data center employment grew by just 300 jobs in 2024, while jobs tied to data center capital spending jumped 56% (PwC for the Data Center Coalition)
Direct data center employment barely changed in 2024. It rose from 1,004,780 to 1,005,080 jobs. At the same time, indirect and induced jobs tied to capital spending jumped from 1.1 million to more than 1.7 million. That’s a 56% increase.
This suggests that much of the recent employment growth has been tied to construction, suppliers, and spending around new development. It also shows a steep slowdown from the previous trend where PwC reported direct employment growth of more than 50% from 2017 to 2023, compared with about 10% for overall U.S. employment.
Permanent US data center employment is projected to reach 650,000 in 2026, up 30% from 2023 (Kelly Services)
The forecast points to continued hiring as new facilities open and existing operations continue to expand. Construction demand is also expected to remain high, with more than 180,000 data center construction jobs projected through 2028.
Contractors building data centers have 11.4 months of backlog, compared with 7.5 months for other contractors (Associated Builders and Contractors)
Data center work appears to be giving contractors a longer pipeline than other types of construction. In July 2026, the 12% of contractors working on data centers reported an average backlog of 11.4 months, compared with 7.5 months among the other 88% surveyed.
That gap aligns with longer construction timelines. Depending on a project’s size and complexity, building a data center can take roughly six to 36 months.
Data Center Jobs by State
California has more data center–supported jobs than any other state, with 818,160 (PwC for the Data Center Coalition)
California leads the country in data center-supported employment, followed by Texas with 548,110, then Florida with 400,100, New York with 312,380, Georgia with 230,140, Virginia with 201,100, and Illinois with 200,040. California also ranked first for direct employment, with 145,820 jobs. This is ahead of Texas at 103,700 and Florida at 73,330.
California’s direct employment slipped slightly from about 150,000 in 2023, but it remained the national leader. The industry’s reach extends beyond these major markets, though. In 2024, data centers directly provided at least 1,000 jobs in 49 states and the District of Columbia.
More than 40% of US data center employment is concentrated in five states (US Census Bureau)
More than 40% of U.S. data center employment is concentrated in just five states: California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Georgia. Even within those states, jobs are clustered heavily in a few counties.
In Texas, nearly 75% of data center employment is concentrated in Travis, Bexar, Collin, and Dallas counties. In California, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Santa Clara counties account for 60%.
Virginia data centers directly employed 17,900 operations workers and 36,700 construction workers in 2025 (NVTC)
Virginia’s data center workforce shows the same construction-heavy pattern seen in other major projects. Northern Virginia accounts for most of the state’s data center employment impact, with 15,210 operations jobs, 29,075 construction jobs, and 87,560 supported jobs in 2025.
That concentration reflects the region’s role as a center of Virginia’s data center industry. The figures also mirror a pattern seen in other large data center markets, with construction work rising sharply during periods of expansion, while the long-term workforce is much smaller.
Statewide, Virginia data centers support 112,880 jobs overall.
Data centers account for more than 17,000 direct and indirect jobs in Loudoun County, Virginia (Loudoun County)
As of March 2026, Loudoun County had approximately 233 existing data center buildings covering 56.5 million square feet. This scale can help explain why the industry accounts for more than 17,000 direct and indirect jobs in the county.
Data centers supported 95,217 jobs in Ohio in 2024 and could support 132,500 by 2030 (Ohio Chamber of Commerce Research Foundation)
The data center employment impact extends beyond workers employed directly by the industry. Of the jobs supported in 2024, 36,857 were direct positions, 30,357 came from supplier industries, and another 28,003 were supported by household spending.
Altogether, the 95,217 jobs supported by Ohio’s data centers generated $6.9 billion in labor income.
Data Center Salaries
Data center employees and contractors in Virginia earn about $100,000 a year on average (Virginia JLARC)
Employees and contractors average about $100,000 a year, while more than 2,800 net new data center jobs reported in FY2024 and FY2025 paid nearly $120,000 on average. By comparison, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has cited an average annual wage in Virginia of roughly $69,453.
Workers in the industry that includes data centers earn $60.78 an hour on average (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
Data center-related pay runs well above national averages. In August 2026, workers in NAICS 518 earned an average of $60.78 an hour, averaging roughly $126,000 a year for full-time work, though the figure is preliminary.
By comparison, the average hourly earnings for all private-sector workers were $37.76 in August 2026. Pay varies quite a bit depending on occupation within the industry.
In 2025, median annual wages were $66,400 for computer support specialists, $87,670 for computer programmers, and $97,930 for computer systems analysts.
New data center construction recruits typically start at $27 an hour and can earn up to $60 an hour after training (NVTC)
Data center construction can offer substantially higher pay than many traditional construction roles. New employees start around $27 an hour but, with training, can reach $60. Some workers report earning 25 to 30% more than in their previous jobs.
By comparison, the median annual pay for a U.S. construction laborer was about $46,680 in 2025. Specialized trades can earn even more. In Virginia, data center electricians start near $24 an hour, while journeymen earn about $56 an hour. Some data center construction workers reportedly earn between $100,000 and $200,000 a year.
The Data Center Labor Shortage
87% of data center professionals say workforce gaps are affecting their operations (AFCOM)
A workforce gap is the difference between the employees and skills a company has today and what it needs to meet current and future demands. In data centers, that gap is getting wider.
Engineers are the most in-demand workers, followed by multi-skilled operators, power and energy engineers, and security specialists.
53% of data center operators have trouble finding qualified candidates for open roles (Uptime Institute)
The difficulty finding qualified data center workers has grown over time, rising from 38% in 2018 to 53% in 2026. The largest skill gaps are in electrical and junior-level operations roles, both cited by 38% of operators, followed by operations management and mechanical positions.
Competition for experienced workers is also intense, with 28% reporting that competitors have hired away employees. This comes as overall U.S. hiring has slowed, with payroll growth weakening in September 2026.
Women also remain underrepresented, with 74% of operators saying that they make up just 10% of staff.
The U.S. construction industry needs 349,000 net new workers in 2026, with data centers driving demand for electricians (Associated Builders and Contractors)
The data center boom is adding pressure to an already tight construction labor market. Associated Builders and Contractors estimates the industry needs 349,000 net new workers in 2026, rising to 456,000 in 2027.
Data center projects are one reason demand for electricians is so high, as these facilities require extensive electrical infrastructure during construction and operation.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects about 72,000 openings for electricians each year through 2035.
Tax Breaks and the Cost Per Job
Virginia’s data center tax break cost $1.94 billion in FY2025, while data centers reported 1,610 new jobs, more than $1.2 million per job (Good Jobs First)
Virginia’s data center tax incentive cost rose from FY2024 to FY2025. In FY2024, the state reported $1.29 billion in forgone revenue tied to 1,197 net new jobs, or about $1.08 million per job. That figure reflects the broader FY2024 tax-break cost, while the $1.02 billion figure cited elsewhere represents the state-only portion of the data center sales tax exemption.
For FY2025, Good Jobs First calculated a cost of more than $1.2 million per reported job when it included state and local revenue.
Because the two calculations do not cover the same types of revenue, they should not be treated as a direct year-over-year comparison. Both, however, place the value of the tax benefits at more than $1 million for each reported new job under their respective calculations.
Virginia data centers created 1 direct permanent job for every $54 million invested from 2020 through late 2025 (Food & Water Watch)
Food & Water Watch makes the point that data centers require far more investment per permanent job than other Virginia industries. From 2020 through late 2025, it was estimated that there was one direct permanent data center job for every $54 million invested. This compares with about $322,000 per job outside the data center space.
Looking back to 1990, the gap narrows to $13 million per data center job versus $137,000 elsewhere.
In FY2024, data center tax breaks made up 79% of Virginia’s economic development incentive spending (Virginia JLARC)
Virginia’s data center exemption dominated the state’s economic development incentives in FY2024. Of roughly $1.3 billion in total spending, about $1.02 billion went to the data center exemption, leaving only $279 million for all other programs combined.
Those remaining incentives included tax breaks for manufacturers and research, business development grants, site-development programs, tourism financing, and custom grants. Other tax incentives accounted for about $172 million, while custom grants totaled about $29 million.
From FY2015 through FY2024, data centers accounted for nearly 53% of Virginia’s $5.2 billion in incentive spending. However, data center amounts were reported only for FY2021 through FY2024.
Virginia collects 48 cents in new state revenue for every dollar of data center sales tax it exempts (Virginia JLARC)
Virginia’s data center tax exemption scores a little better than the state’s average economic development incentive, according to JLARC’s economic-impact metrics. Virginia receives an estimated 48 cents in new state revenue for every dollar exempted, compared with 41 cents for the average Virginia incentive.
JLARC also estimates that each $1 million in data center exemptions supports 84 jobs across the economy, compared to 58 for the average incentive. That number is a broader economic impact number, and shouldn’t be read as 84 permanent jobs within data centers.
Good Jobs First, a subsidy-accountability group, says states that compute returns on similar data to the sales tax exemptions lose between 52 and 70 cents for every dollar exempted.
One Illinois data center promised 20 jobs in exchange for $51 million in sales tax exemptions, $2.6 million per job (Good Jobs First)
The Illinois example sits well above the state’s own average for subsidized data center projects. Good Jobs First estimates that the state spends about $1.4 million per job across those projects, while the Elk Grove Village deal came in far higher.
Similar patterns appear in Ohio, where the average subsidy cost is about $1.4 million per job at Google facilities and roughly $1 million at Meta’s.
Ohio’s data center sales tax exemption cost more than $1.5 billion in 2025, more than 11 times the state’s forecast (Policy Matters Ohio)
Ohio’s experience shows just how quickly data center tax incentives can outgrow early projections. The much larger-than-expected cost has raised concerns about how accurately states can forecast the long-term price of data center incentives.
Policy Matters Ohio argues that missing projections by more than $1 billion makes budgeting and public oversight more difficult. The employment return adds another layer to that concern, as the group estimates that Ohio’s data center subsidies often exceed $1 million for each new job created.
Indiana lost $655 million to data center sales tax exemptions from 2019 to 2025, and more than 93% went to Amazon (Good Jobs First)
Indiana’s data center tax exemptions were highly concentrated among a small number of companies. From 2019 through 2025, just six companies received the benefits, and Amazon accounted for more than 93% of the $655 million in total exemptions. Amazon’s own exemption rose from $50.5 million in 2024 to $561 million in 2025, a 1,011% year-over-year increase.
Good Jobs First reports that no state publicly tracks both the jobs data centers promise to create and the jobs they actually create. This lack of data makes it hard to see which companies are benefiting and where the money is going.
Do Data Centers Create Local Jobs?
When a data center opens, county employment rises about 3.5% over time, but rural counties see no measurable job gains (Georgia Tech)
The average employment gain masks a sizeable divide between metropolitan and rural communities. Yue and Zheng found that county employment rises only about 0.9% during the first three years after a data center opens, but grows about 4.1% over time in metropolitan counties. Rural counties show no measurable employment gains.
Though more data centers are being built in rural communities, metropolitan areas often have larger labor pools and more local contractors, suppliers, and professional service firms.
Rural facilities often employ fewer than 100 permanent workers. Many specialized services come from outside the county. As a result, rural communities may host the facility without seeing the same local job spillovers.
Virginia had 33% of U.S. data center capacity in 2024 but only 4% of the nation’s data center jobs (Food & Water Watch)
Food & Water Watch, an environmental advocacy group, compares Virginia’s share of national data center capacity with employment measured under BLS industry code NAICS 518210.
The disparity suggests that hosting a very large share of the nation’s data center infrastructure doesn’t translate to a similar share of employment. Part of the gap for this employment figure comes from a narrower industry classification than broader PwC estimates.
A county’s first large data center raises local data-processing employment 56% over a decade, which works out to 100 to 200 jobs in a typical county (Brookings Institution)
This insight from Brookings suggests that a large percentage increase can still translate into a fairly modest number of local jobs.
The researchers also found no increase in wages. That differs from Georgia Tech findings, which showed wages rising about 5% in counties with data centers.
Comparing counties with and without data centers can make it hard to understand the impact on jobs. Data centers often choose counties that are already in growth mode. The researchers here tried to separate that earlier growth from the jobs added after the county’s first large data center opened.
An analysis of Texas counties from 2000 to 2024 found no net job growth from data centers (Michael J. Hicks, Ball State University)
Hicks measured the net employment change attributable to data center openings in Texas counties, rather than simply counting workers employed at the facilities. His analysis estimated about 46 additional jobs per data center in the computing infrastructure sector, but the result had very low statistical certainty.
He also found that gains in that narrower sector were offset by losses elsewhere in the broader information industry, resulting in no measurable net county-level job growth.
This closely aligns with Georgia Tech’s finding of no measurable employment gains in rural counties.
However, interpret the results cautiously because Hicks published the analysis on Substack, and it has not been peer-reviewed.