Benefits Beyond the Buildings
The benefits of data centers go beyond the buildings-providing services and opportunities for the communities where they are located. The US data center industry catalyzes economic growth, attracts investments, and fosters innovation.
Employment
US data centers create stable jobs for thousands of Americans while stimulating the growth of supporting industries such as construction, telecommunications, power infrastructure, and technology manufacturing.
Skilled, High-Paying Jobs
The data center industry has created and sustained employment over long periods of time, bringing jobs and new industries to the communities where data centers are located. Data center campuses create long-term construction jobs and every data center facility requires ongoing maintenance and operations support staff. In 2021 alone, US data centers directly employed 468,800 people and indirectly generated an additional 3.04 million jobs in construction, manufacturing, services, information technology, and more.
The sector offers stable, high-paying jobs in areas like operations, systems engineering, networking and connectivity, controls and monitoring, and business support. For example, the average annual pay in Georgia's data center industry increased twice as fast as the average Georgia private-sector employee (64% compared to 35%) between 2010 and 2020.
Multiplier Effect
Data center jobs also have an outsized multiplier effect. An independent analysis from PwC found that each direct job in the data center industry supported an average of 6.4 additional jobs elsewhere in the economy. This includes jobs in construction and industries that support other businesses in the community, such as hotels, restaurants, and retail.
Sources:
PwC, Economic, Environmental,and Social Impacts of DataCenters in the United States, September 2023
The Impact of Data Centers on the Georgia Economy, Mangum Economics, December 2021
Development
Data centers drive economic development in local communities.
The impact of data centers is widespread, contributing to local small businesses, supporting area schools, and bringing in tenants that introduce new industries to the community. The construction and ongoing operations of data centers mean years of business for local restaurants, hotels, rental car agencies, HVAC installers, and other small businesses.
As data centers attract new opportunities and development to their localities, they also place less strain on community resources and local infrastructure than other types of development, like residential communities. For example, in Northern Virginia, data centers return as much as $13 in local tax revenue to fund schools, social services, and other priorities for every $1 they or their employees require in county services.
Support for Schools
Data centers also benefit local schools and educational institutions in their communities by supporting STEM education in K-12 schools, funding internships and scholarships, and contributing to new fields of higher education, including several data center-specific programs at institutions like Northern Virginia Community College and Atlanta Technical College.
Innovation
From investments in renewable energy and carbon reduction to innovations in efficiency and utilization, data centers are paving the way forward. Leading companies have adopted a number of innovations to reduce energy consumption in data centers, such as efficient cooling technology solutions, AI-driven caching, load-balancing technologies, and energy-efficient servers. These steps to enhance energy efficiency often have benefits for local communities. For example, AWS built 18 solar farms in Virginia to provide electricity to the communities’ power grid for distribution and consumption by customers in the area. Microsoft also announced plans to operate its data centers at warmer temperatures so that it can reduce water use by 95 percent by 2024.
