The Data Center Jobs Number Is One Worker per Megawatt, in a Bit

A yearlong Senate investigation put numbers on the data center pitch that host communities rarely get to see.

• It covered seven major developers, among them Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, CoreWeave, Digital Realty and Equinix.
• Companies that answered put permanent staffing near one worker per megawatt of demand.
• A 100 megawatt campus draws roughly the power of 100,000 homes and employs about 100 people.
• GPUs are an estimated 39 percent of the spend at a one gigawatt campus, so the sales tax exemption on hardware is the biggest subsidy.
• None of the seven would commit to paying for the new generation and transmission their campuses require.

The House passed a ratepayer bill 417 to 3. The Senate then killed it, 57 to 43. Read the full breakdown.