How important are data center construction jobs, really?
I know the title sounds like I’m about to trash construction workers, but I honestly want to learn the answer to this question.
Every time the topic of data centers comes up, the proponents are quick to bring up the “hundreds” or “thousands” of jobs that they will create. When you look into the details, however, there are always just a handful of people who will actually be hired to operate the data center. The other 99% of jobs “created” are from the construction workers who will be paid to build it.
Isn’t it misleading to refer to these as “new” jobs? After all, the people who will be contracted to build the data center are going to be people who are already active in the construction industry. If there isn’t any data center contract, then these workers will just be on some other building project instead. There’s always something being built somewhere, so the data center itself isn’t accomplishing anything special, right?
Along those same lines, when the construction is finished, the workers move on to the next project, which is probably going to be in a completely different area. So isn’t it also disingenuous to make it sound like all of these jobs are going to that city/county? Nobody is about to buy a house and move their family there just to build a data center, right? The local gas stations and fast food places might see an uptick, but otherwise the economic development (outside of the data center itself) is going to be negligible. And once the workers leave, that’s it… all of those “new jobs” are gone.
If I’m way off base about this, please help me understand. Are these data center construction contracts really important enough for politicians to tout them as a key reason for supporting the development?