# What are the actual employment effects of data centres?

**Published by:** [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com/)
**Published on:** 2026-08-01
**Categories:** data centres, employment, labour market, brookings, research
**URL:** https://brandondonnelly.com/what-are-the-actual-employment-effects-of-data-centres

## Content

People used to get excited about data centre construction, and communities used to compete for them, frequently with incentives. They represented job creation and an investment in the new economy. But things feel quite different today. According to new research from Brookings, more than 100 local communities in the US have enacted moratoriums on data centres, and more than 300 state data centre bills were filed in the first six weeks of 2026 alone. Earlier this year, Sanders and AOC also introduced the AI Data Center Moratorium Act. The reasons for this are clear. Brookings reports that the PJM grid region in the US (which serves about 65 million people) saw its power supply costs increase from about $2.2 billion to $14.7 billion in a single year, and data centres are thought to account for nearly two-thirds of the increase. So, are the employment and economic gains worth it? The new research from Brookings shows that not all data centres are created equal. Hyperscale data centres (like those built by Google and Amazon) can quickly become the largest taxpayers in a county. They also appear to create higher employment benefits compared to colocation facilities (where a landlord builds a data centre and then leases it out to remote tenants). The largest employment effects were also seen when data centres cluster. This makes sense, and it's the foundation of cities. When people and uses cluster together, they produce larger ecosystem effects. Conversely, standalone facilities were found to result in modest gains. A data centre is not a labour-intensive operation in and of itself. If you'd like to read the full Brookings brief, click here. Photo by NASA

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