UK datacentre jobs claim overstated by three-quarters, says research

New mega campuses may generate as few as 1.6 roles per megawatt of energy consumed

New research challenges existing job projections, warning that large-scale sites may deliver far fewer permanent roles than promised while putting further pressure on energy, water and local communities.

The UK’s planned digital infrastructure expansion will create jobs for fewer than 10,400 workers – a quarter of that forecast, according to new research.

Environmental thinktank Verdant disputes estimates put forward by industry lobby group TechUK, which has said that the datacentre sector could create 40,000 job vacancies over the next few years.

Proposed datacentre development remains highly controversial, given the impact on energy and water supplies and on the quality of life of those living close to them. Several proposed datacentre campuses in the UK have been, or remain, the subject of furious disagreement between local communities, developers and the government. A proposal for a million square foot campus on green belt land near South Mimms on the M25 was approved this week after a two-year planning battle.

Another site in Iver in Buckinghamshire being developed for US hyperscale provider Corscale Data Centers has moved into pre-development after having been granted planning at the end of 2024 after a bitterly contested battle.

The bigger the datacentre, the fewer the jobs

Verdant’s analysis was informed by publicly available data drawn from planning applications, company accounts and press releases. The research is framed in environmental terms and claims that fewer than 4,400 jobs have been directly created by completed datacentre projects which equates to approximately 8.6 jobs for each megawatt of energy consumed. By contrast, the TechUK projection is 43.7 jobs per megawatt.

The datacentres at planning stage such as the Iver site are much larger scale than the projects already underway and are therefore likely to be significantly less job intensive than smaller datacentres. Verdant estimates for this type of project there may be as few as 1.6 permanent positions created per megawatt consumed.

Policy challenge for government

Verdant’s research highlights the public policy challenge the government faces.

The government is desperate to grow the economy, and the AI Action Plan with AI Growth Zones is designed to do just that, with datacentres as the foundation of digital infrastructure. Job creation is at the forefront of arguments for central government intervention in planning decisions.

Opponents of datacentre construction – and there are many of them - argue that the vast energy and water demands of these facilities, are being insufficiently considered, and that the economic benefits do not outweigh the environmental impact.

If communities decide that the environmental impact of proposed datacentre development outweighs potential employment gains, consent will be harder to gain. The risk is that datacentre development follows the trajectory of the US, where datacentres have become utterly toxic to any politician seen to be advocating for them.

James Meadway, Co-director of Verdant, said: “We’re being rushed into supporting a frantic pace of datacentre buildout on very flimsy economic grounds.

“Clearly artificial intelligence and related technologies have great potential. But vast new datacentres arrive at significant real costs to local communities and even our climate ambitions, and their use case has to be made by the government and industry – rather than assuming we can build first and then work out why we did later.”