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As more and more data centers pop up to accommodate increased AI use, there have been a lot of questions regarding who benefits from them. Though the facilities themselves don't employ many people once open, proponents claim that data centers can boost the local economy by creating lots of new jobs. A study from the MIT Center for Real Estate provides some useful insight, revealing that the truth is, unsurprisingly, more complicated. While it does link data centers to "a gradual increase in local employment following data center entry," the research shows that modest success doesn't transfer across the board.

Before getting into the details, it's worth mentioning that this study was not peer reviewed and was published for "discussion and comment purposes." The researchers looked at 1,584 active data centers in the United States that opened and operated between 2000 and 2023 to examine their impact on things like employment and income in the surrounding area.…