The $10 billion data center campus in Lebanon, Indiana, will employ about 300 people once it’s up and running. The Meta Center, the company announced in February, will represent more than $10 billion in regional investment. At peak construction, the project is expected to support more than 4,000 construction jobs. Once operational, the campus will support approximately 300 jobs.
That works out to one permanent position for every $33 million invested. Compare that to TSMC’s semiconductor complex in Phoenix, Arizona: TSMC’s total investment of $165 billion in the US is expected to directly create 12,000 jobs when all sites are completed and fully operational, according to the company’s president, Rose Castanares, in an interview cited by TrendForce. That’s one job for every $14 million, still tough but more than double the employee density of Meta’s data center.
The gap is widening. Virginia data centers generate just one full-time job for every $13 million invested, according to a January 2026 analysis by Food & Water Watch, based on Virginia Economic Development Partnership data dating back to 1990. In contrast, it costs $137,000 to create one job outside of the data center sector, about 100 times less investment.
The difference is amid a raging national debate about what communities should expect when a hyperscale facility arrives in their region.
That shows institution-level data
Highly automated hyperscale campuses can work for orthopedic staff. Facilities exceeding 100 megawatts can operate with as few as 20 to 30 employees per 100 MW, according to the November 2025 data center workforce forecast from the Hamm Institute. Industry estimates put the full-time staffing of automated campuses at about 25 to 40 operators per 100 megawatts, Latitude Media reported in May 2026.
Certain project announcements confirm the pattern. Amazon Web Services plans to invest $35 billion by 2040 to establish more data center campuses throughout Virginia. This investment will create at least 1,000 new jobs statewide, according to the Virginia governor’s office. That’s 1,000 jobs over 17 years for $35 billion. Ark Data Centers is building a $136 million campus expansion in Ohio. The number of final works for the project is exactly 10, according to Futurism, citing public records.
The average retail data center that uses two to five megawatts employs about 30 workers, according to Built In. Hyperscale facilities create 100 to 1,000 jobs, depending on size. But even at the high end, the numbers are small compared to the capital employed.
How data centers compare to other developments
Manufacturing plants competing for the same federal incentive packages have different labor profiles. Pharmaceutical company Becton, Dickinson and Company is investing $110 million in expanding production in Columbus, Nebraska, creating 120 jobs. A new automotive business in Orangeburg, South Carolina, is investing $120 million in a new plant, bringing about 400 jobs. Both projects cost less than Ark Data Centers’ Ohio expansion, which promised 10.
TSMC’s Arizona project shows the difference on the largest scale. The initial investment of $65 billion in three properties is expected to generate approximately 6,000 direct jobs, more than 20,000 construction jobs, and tens of thousands of indirect jobs. A semiconductor fabric of that size requires human operators who operate the equipment around the clock. A cost-effective data center does not.
The reason for the structure is straightforward. Hyperscale facilities are designed to operate with very few people, and most of the capital expenditure is on hardware that is replaced every five to seven years rather than long-term infrastructure that requires active staff, as noted by Latitude Media.
The question of funding
State and local governments have offered incentive data center packages built on industry-focused frameworks. About half of the state’s data center grants, 16 of 36, do not require job creation, according to Good Jobs First, a nonprofit that monitors funding. Countries that set the requirement generally set it at 50 jobs or less per project.
The cost of each job can be exorbitant. In one case, a data center in New York offered 125 jobs in exchange for $1.4 billion, or $11 million per job, Good Jobs found. The average cost of data center “megadeals” is $1.95 million per job, according to research by Good Jobs First.
Virginia provides a clear case study. The state lost more than $1.6 billion in tax revenue in fiscal year 2025 due to the data center tax exemption, a 118% increase over the previous fiscal year, according to Data Center Dynamics, citing Virginia’s annual fiscal report. In fiscal year 2025, the data center industry added 1,610 jobs and reported a tax benefit of $1.9 billion, or $1.2 million for each new job, according to VPM.
What the research says about the broader implications
The picture becomes even more complicated when indirect employment is considered. Economists Dany Bahar and Greg Wright found that states that get their first big data center see private employment increase by 4% to 5% over five to six years. Construction employment jumped 11%, while information sector employment grew 22%. Their study, published by the Brookings Institution in May 2026, analyzed about 770 US data centers.
For a mobile county with 98,000 employees, these estimates mean about 2,000 to 4,000 additional jobs after six years, depending on the type of facility. But the benefits depend on concentration. Isolated institutions produce less employment benefits. The benefits of the information sector require more resources in the same area.
Data centers are creating local jobs, though fewer than industry advocates want. Naive estimates that fail to account for preexisting growth trends overestimate the effect by a factor of three. The Brookings study also found that location decisions for hyperscale facilities are driven by availability of energy, land, and fiber infrastructure, not tax breaks. In local regions, incentives account for the largest share of total investment (62%), suggesting that subsidies may be more important for institutions that generate the smallest employment gains.
Economist Michael J. Hicks, examining data center development in Texas, reached a grim conclusion. His estimates concluded that the net effect of data center employment in the region is zero, as workers move between sub-sectors rather than entering new positions, he wrote in November 2025.
None of this is to say that data centers provide no economic value to host communities. Property tax revenue can be significant. In Loudoun County, Virginia, data centers generate 38% of the county’s General Fund revenue and nearly half of all property tax collections. But property tax revenue and job creation are different metrics, and communities evaluating data center proposals should know which one is being offered.
