Should, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will. Or the data centers might (illegally, sometimes) build their own infrastructure, exclusively for their own use.
I can’t imagine it being good for most areas.
Supposedly, the job gains are temporary. The big gains are in construction and once the data centers are built, those jobs go away. I assume that they have a manager or two to manage the centers, but those are unlikely to be from the local populaton. There would be some jobs for things like maintenance and repairs, but that’s about it.
And the data centers often get tax rebates. So the services that the data centers need will be paid by the local population. More police? Taxes on citizens. Upgrade the fire department? Taxes on citizens. Upgrade in street maintenance? Taxes on citizens. Upgrade in water systems? Taxes on citizens.
The citizens will end up paying for many things for the data centers out of taxes collected from the citizens. It’s a no-win situation for the citizens.
The citizens are getting played.
Data centers don’t have jobs. Sure, a handful. I’d be surprised if there were 100 employees. There are also the vendors, so someone like a Foxconn has their staff that go in and swap out a compute unit that failed and then sent to a center for repair. And these jobs don’t pay much. I was on the Microsoft jobs website earlier today, didn’t save any of these, but saw data center technicians in the US where the salary was up to $40/hour.
Microsoft has a big ass data center in Quincy Washington. Fascinating place. I visited 2-3 times but not for a decade. It’s on the Columbia river just down stream from a hydro electric dam to access cheap electricity. There were a dozen other data centers in the vicinity and some crypto mining firms. Back then, there would be 10-20 people in a command center watching screens and monitoring the operations. When I was there they had Gen 2 (giant heavy duty centers that had redundent power supplies, huge banks of submarine style batteries, back up back up diesel generators, etc) and IIRC thru gen 6. One of the gens was just 40 foot container units under a very large roof only roof, so ambient cooling from the environment.
This just in-
Back in 1999, 87 acres of land in Taylor, Texas, was donated (nominal fee $10) to the city by a farmer, with a condition in the deed that it would be used for community parkland. In 2025, the land was sold for $10M to a data center developer, who has won several legal battles against the nearby residents who are trying to stop the massive construction project, reports 404 Media. Now, the disgruntled locals are planning to take their case to an appeals court.
Time to vote out that city council, or whatever it’s called in Texas; at any rate, I certainly hope they get to vote against whoever approved this mess. Actually, past time. Hope they win in court.
Is all news out of Texas evil?
Mostly, altho there is a chance they may elect a Dem Senator. Texas= evil- Florida= crazy.