A $10 billion data center campus in Lebanon, Indiana, will employ about 300 people once it is operational. Meta’s facility, the company announced in February, will represent more than $10 billion in regional investment. At peak construction, the project is expected to support more than 4,000 construction jobs. Once operational, the campus will support about 300 jobs.
That works out to one permanent position for every $33 million invested. Compare that to TSMC’s semiconductor complex in Phoenix, Arizona: TSMC’s total investment of $165 billion in the U.S. is expected to directly create 12,000 jobs once all sites are completed and fully operational, according to the company’s president, Rose Castanares, in an interview cited by TrendForce. That is one job for every $14 million, still capital-heavy but more than twice the labor density of Meta’s data center.
The gap gets wider. Virginia data centers generate just one permanent job for every $13 million invested, according to a January 2026 analysis by Food & Water Watch, based on Virginia Economic Development Partnership data dating back to 1990. In contrast, it costs $137,000 to create one job outside of the data center sector, about 100 times less investment.
The disparity sits at the center of an accelerating national debate over what communities should expect when a hyperscale facility lands in their county.
What the facility-level data shows
The most automated hyperscale campuses can run on skeleton crews. Facilities exceeding 100 megawatts can operate with as few as 20 to 30 permanent staff per 100 MW, according to a November 2025 data center workforce forecast from the Hamm Institute. Industry benchmarks put permanent staffing at the most automated campuses at about 25 to 40 operators per 100 megawatts, Latitude Media reported in May 2026.
Specific project announcements confirm the pattern. Amazon Web Services plans to invest $35 billion by 2040 to establish multiple data center campuses across Virginia. This investment will create at least 1,000 total new jobs across the state, according to the Virginia governor’s office. That is 1,000 jobs over 17 years for $35 billion. Ark Data Centers is building a $136 million campus expansion in Ohio. The project’s final job count is exactly 10, according to Futurism, citing public records.
An average retail data center using two to five megawatts employs about 30 permanent workers, according to Built In. Hyperscale facilities create 100 to 1,000 permanent jobs, depending on size. But even at the high end, the numbers are small relative to the capital deployed.
