datacenters or what I might call HyperScale create lots of jobs.
now just because there is a data center being built in some random place lets just call it Malaga does not mean there will be tons of jobs there.
Sure there are lots of construction jobs in the beginning, and there are people who realize there will be maybe 40 or more jobs that will have decent pay and those people will want to build houses or buy houses, and need extra infrastructure.
That is the minor job impact. The companies who build racks, network gear, servers, the oem companies who make the processors, ram and hard drives all have been adding employees to handle the demand.
I don’t know how many foundries have been built in us yet, but I know there has been some push to do that, which also will create jobs.
Then there is the surveillance state that is about to go on a massive hiring spree so they can analyze all the collected location, social media, and digital currency data and sure in the beginning mostly as make-work, well until things get really fun for everyone.
The “surveillance state” part of your comment is what should scare everyone to death. But it never will. Right now the single biggest surveillance Trojan Horse we have is called the cell phone, and people just can’t get enough of them.
When AI gets rolling into high gear the surveillance people will know everything about everybody, including their bathroom habits, such as how many squares of toilet paper they use for each sitting.
The faculties we develop employ many people from the local community, yes we hire 24/7 security, but we also hire 24/7 on site technicians requiring technical degrees. We also use local suppliers for support, including HVAC contractors, electricians, maintenance technicians and even materials from the local hardware stores. We also pay increased property taxes, income taxes, and provide a significant revenue increase into the local communities thus providing long term benefits to the local communities. the impact on a community is directly driven by the company behind the project not the project itself. What the mass media spews out is not always accurate!
There are a lot of jobs upstream of the construction, making or sourcing (hopefully not outsourcing overseas) all the things needed to do construction: Tools, heavy equipment, light equipment, building materials, Gatorade for the construction workers, this time of year!, and so on. These tend to be long term jobs so long as building of data centers is popular. They are scattered around the country, of course.
In my area: The new $100 billion AI data center campus planned for the former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant near Paducah, Kentucky, is expected to create approximately 8,000 construction jobs, and 600 permanent jobs.