I’ve cited one November 2025 study showing no net job growth from data centers in Texas. Planning and power expert Catherine Curtis finds that data center builders grossly exaggerate their job creation potential:
First, the national picture: Brookings Institution researchers compared employment outcomes in 93 counties that received large data centers — 770 facilities in all — against those that did not and found job creation was regularly overstated by a factor of three.
At the state level, a report to the Virginia legislature from the state’s Department of Taxation found the industry reported adding 1,610 jobs statewide in fiscal year 2025 while receiving $1.9 billion in tax benefits. That works out to approximately $1.2 million per new job.
Georgia gave the industry $474 million in tax exemptions in a single year. Its official employment audit was later revised to less than a third of its original figures, with no explanation given for the discrepancy. In the end, the state had paid nearly $289,000 per permanent job it could actually count [Catherine Curtis, “The Reality of Data Center Jobs,” Governing, 2026.06.24].
If your state can afford to hand out $1.2 million to create a single job, you might get just as good a result by hiring a dozen people at $100K each to drive snowplow or pick up trash. You’ll get more useful work done, and you’ll have a reliable count of the workers providing the bang for your public bucks.