You’ll Choke When You Hear How Many Full-Time Jobs a $136 Million Data Center Will Actually Create
Industrial concrete company Fit Precast is dedicating $102 million to its new facility in Gastonia, North Carolina. 125 new jobs For workers in the region. Pharmaceutical giant Becton Dickinson invests $110 million in manufacturing expansion in Columbus Ohio — 120 jobs. An automotive startup in Orangeburg, South Carolina is investing $120 million in a new facility. about 400 jobs.
Meet Ark Data Centers, an Iowa firm now building a $136 million campus expansion in Northeast Ohio. The project costs more than any of the above, but the final job count won’t be in the hundreds, or even dozens: instead, it’s exactly ten.
The Ark project was one of eight developments awarded a multimillion-dollar tax break by the Ohio Tax Credit Authority; not on his own initiative but at the recommendation of JobsOhio, a nonprofit economic development organization in the state.
The data center company’s tax cut was the largest of the eight. accordingly cleveland.comand constitutes a 50 percent ten-year sales exemption that mostly covers newly purchased equipment. In total, it represents $4.5 million in state tax exemptions. cleveland reports — would likely bring a whopping ten jobs for workers who would still have to pay state income taxes.
Although a total of ten jobs have been created, it is not yet clear what else Ark plans to bring to the state. With nearly 200 data facilities already calling Ohio home, the state is already Drowning in AI infrastructure projectsWhich consume municipal governments and they threaten to create something statewide energy crisis.
Unlike companies like Fit Precast, whose business in durable manufacturing will likely provide the community with stable employment for years to come, their data center business notoriously insecure. Its staff generally consists of a core team of low-paid security guards and IT workers, resulting in a huge indirect cost to taxpayers.
As labor investigator Greg LeRoy said Mother Jones In a recent interview, data center tycoons have pocketed more than $1 million in government subsidies for every permanent job they’ve ever created.
An analysis by nonprofit Food & Water Watch found that the total capital investment required to open a full-time data center job in Virginia, though not Ohio, is nearly 100 times more better than similar jobs in other industries.
Considering data centers wildly unpopular It remains to be seen how a project that created ten jobs persuaded Ohio to back down, given public opinion and a terrible investment overall, and how long it would take for taxpayers to demand a change.
More about data centers: Farmer Hailed as a Hero for Rejecting Huge Payment to Turn His Land into a Giant Data Center
