Back in March, we shared the story of a $136 million data center going up in Northeastern Ohio, which was slated to bring in a whopping ten full-time jobs. That project received a $4.5 million state tax exemption, which is egregious enough on its own — but a new project in New York State is making that Ohio handout look like chump change.
First reported by New York Focus, a data center being built by financial giant JPMorganChase is receiving $77 million in subsidies. What does the local economy get in return for its generosity? The answer, incredibly, is just a single full-time job.
JPMorganChase, which received the $77 million tax break in 2024, plans to use the funds to expand a data center in Orangeburg, a small New York town about a 45 minute drive away from Times Square.
“The county is giving away quite a lot of public money in exchange basically for nothing,” Kasia Tarczynska, a senior research analyst at the corporate watchdog group Good Jobs First told NY Focus.
The dismal pork-to-jobs ratio highlights an inconvenient wrinkle in the data center boom that’s flourished as the AI industry has taken off: the massive facilities are huge draws on power grids and water supplies, but they only require a skeleton crew of human staff to run.
Still, Steven Porath of the Rockland County Industrial Development Agency — one of the local entities that approved the handout — said full-time jobs aren’t the right yardstick to use here. “If that is how you’re going to narrowly look at it… anybody would say that’s ridiculous,” he told NY Focus, adding that the project will create over 1,400 temporary jobs for local contractors (the vast majority of which will dry up after the expansion is completed, it’s worth noting.)
On top of representing a major government handout to private enterprise, local activists are concerned that the increased data center presence will drive up utility prices in the Orangeburg area, which has become a burgeoning hub for data center build outs in the New York City metro region.
While the JPMorganChase expansion is still under construction, it could be just the start of the town’s battle with big tech’s data center obsession — which is increasingly being subsidized by US residents, one way or another.
More on data centers: Man at City Council Meeting Makes Devastating Case Against Proposed Local Data Center
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