Are you sure? Microsoft hired about 500 full time employees for its first data center in Wisconsin.
https://www.wpr.org/news/microsoft-hired-375-people-for-moun...
Are you sure? Microsoft hired about 500 full time employees for its first data center in Wisconsin.
https://www.wpr.org/news/microsoft-hired-375-people-for-moun...
Construction jobs. Those will only stay around as long as Microsoft keeps churning out additional datacenters in that local area.
Microsoft almost certainly ain't the one hiring construction workers. That work gets contracted out.
Those aren't construction jobs. They're for the finished data center.
Construction is ongoing
The Mount Pleasant fairwater campus is ~1.27 square km... That's massive compared to the DC who employ only 20 people
Moreover, from the same article that you linked:
> “These aren’t short term construction jobs,” he said. “These are construction jobs that are going to take place over years and years.”
That's better than a short term-only construction job... And in the meanwhile it's possible that the rest of the local economy might also witness a boost
But once the construction will be complete, those jobs will go.
I think it's possible and likely that, per-square-meter the Mount Pleasant DCs might employ more people than other DCs, but:
- Microsoft wouldn't pay more people to do the same job that fewer could. Maybe compacting the construction of multiple massive DCs grants them some economies of scale that offset the additional costs due to the additional complexity and employment requirements... Or maybe they are building a massive project precisely because that bumps up the employment numbers, making their project more appealing for local authorities. Either way, a DC is a DC. If the employment numbers are different, we should ask ourselves why
- just because hundreds more are planned, doesn't mean that we can trust 100% those numbers will materialise: Oracle claimed force majeure to step away from a $3 billion New Mexico facility... If leases are uncommenced, any company might also be able to easily walk away
The article distinguishes between the 500 permanent jobs at the completed data center from the thousands more jobs for building a dozen more data centers (many of which are construction jobs as you note) that will last into the medium term.
And most of them will be on unemployment or working on another location pretty soon.