Pennsylvania sees data center job growth
Data center jobs in Pennsylvania increased by more than 48% from 2018 to 2024.
Why it matters: Companies, investors and governments are pouring tons of money and resources into data centers to help power AI and other next-gen tech, but there's debate over how many jobs they'll create and whether they're worth the energy required to run them.
Zoom out: Arkansas (+241.9%), South Dakota (+179.4%) and Georgia (131.5%) had the biggest increases in data center employment between the first quarters of 2018 and 2024, per the U.S. Census Bureau's Quarterly Workforce Indicators. Ohio had a nearly 56% increase in jobs.
Zoom in: Pennsylvania has 71 data centers, according to Data Center Map, about 42% of which are in the Pittsburgh area. Ohio has 175 data centers.
Yes, but: The raw job numbers are often relatively small.
Pennsylvania had 13,452 data center jobs in Q1 2024. Ohio had 11,791.
Arkansas had about 4,300. Georgia had about 25,000.
Zoom out: There were about 452,000 data center jobs nationally as of Q1 2024.
That's less than half a percent of all U.S. private-sector jobs at the time.
Caveat: These numbers include data centers as well as web hosting and a few other related fields.
The bottom line: Major tech companies are spending unprecedented amounts of money on data centers, Axios' Michael Flaherty recently reported.
But that money may not generate vast employment, unlike other big spending booms. Still, backers hope buildout will attract long-term investment from artificial intelligence and other tech companies.
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