DATA CENTERS WORK

The digital courthouse, post office, and power station, all in one building.

A data center is a secure industrial building full of computers that store and move the country’s information. When you deposit a paycheck, refill a prescription, check the radar before a storm, or call 911, a data center somewhere in America does the work.

They are not a novelty and they are not optional. They are infrastructure, as essential to modern life as the interstate highway or the rural electric cooperative was to earlier generations.

The question isn’t whether America needs them. It’s whether we build them on American soil, under American law, with American jobs, or let that capacity be built somewhere else.

Banking

54%

of Americans manage their bank accounts primarily by mobile app, the top banking channel six years running.[4]

911 Calls

240M

emergency calls a year, with Next Generation 911 moving dispatch onto modern IP networks.[5]

Hospitals

99%

of U.S. hospitals keep patient records in certified electronic health record systems.[6]

Television

44.8%

of all U.S. TV viewing is now streaming, more than broadcast and cable combined.[7]

Retail

16.9%

of all U.S. retail sales happen online, from Main Street storefronts to family farms selling direct.[8]

Institutions

1 in 3

of the world’s data center capacity runs on-premises at banks, hospitals, insurers, and government agencies, not just Big Tech.[9]

An American growth industry

5.5M

American jobs supported

by the data center industry in 2024

$927B

added to U.S. GDP

in 2024 alone, counting direct, indirect & induced effects

$204B

in taxes contributed

to federal, state & local government in 2024

4.5

jobs supported elsewhere

in the economy for every one direct data center job

Figures from PwC’s Economic Contributions of U.S. Data Centers study (2024 data), commissioned by the Data Center Coalition[2]. We say so up front, because every number on this page is reported with its source.

Good neighbors that pay their way, and then some.

A data center is the rare industrial project that arrives with jobs and money and asks for almost nothing back: no crowded classrooms, no strained roads, no smokestacks.

Careers in the trades

A typical build puts about 1,700 local electricians, pipefitters, welders, and operators to work, then sustains ~157 permanent jobs paying above-average wages.[3] Operators fund the pipeline too, from Meta’s Data Center Institute at a North Carolina community college[31] to Google’s $50 million skilled-trades training initiative.[32]

Lower taxes for homeowners

In Loudoun County, Virginia, data centers cover 38% of the general fund. This let the county cut its residential property tax rate every year for a decade while increasing school funding.[24] Prince William County collected $280 million from the industry in 2024.[25]

A stronger electric system

Serving data center load means new substations and transmission that the whole community shares: Dominion completed 123 transmission projects and 13 substations in half a year in Virginia,[12] and Georgia regulators paired grid expansion with ratepayer protections.[11]

The South is winning this industry

Metro Atlanta is now the #2 data center market in America and #1 for capacity under construction.[27] That means billions in private capital flowing to Southern counties, trade schools, and tax rolls instead of somewhere else.

The race is real. The finish line is compute.

China has set a national target of 300 exaflops of computing power and is on track to nearly double its data center capacity by 2030.[34][35]

Washington’s leading strategists are blunt about what that means: the electricity supply behind American data centers is now “the most acutely binding constraint” on American AI dominance.[33] The nation that hosts the world’s compute writes the rules for the technologies built on it.

The policy is set

America’s AI Action Plan (July 2025) and Executive Order 14318 fast-track permitting for data centers and the grid that powers them,[36][37] and the Department of Energy has opened federal sites for new AI infrastructure, including Oak Ridge in Tennessee and Savannah River in South Carolina.[38]

The capital is committed

The Stargate project alone has committed $500 billion to American AI infrastructure,[39] and Microsoft invested roughly $80 billion in AI data centers in fiscal 2025, more than half of it on American soil.[40] This is one of the largest private infrastructure buildouts in the nation’s history.

The security stakes are national

Defense rules require the military’s sensitive data to live in facilities on U.S. soil, run by U.S. persons.[41] Every data center built here keeps American banking records, health data, and government systems under American law. Every one we don’t build is capacity ceded to someone else.

Data centers are how America keeps its data, and its future, on American soil.

Sources

Advocacy is only as good as its footnotes. Every figure on this page traces to the government report, county record, federal regulation, or named study below, compiled in July 2026. Where a study was commissioned by industry, we say so.

  1. 1.Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory / U.S. Department of Energy (2024). 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report (LBNL-2001637)
  2. 2.PwC, commissioned by the Data Center Coalition (2026). Economic Contributions of U.S. Data Centers, 2023–2024
  3. 3.U.S. Chamber of Commerce Technology Engagement Center (2017). Data Centers: Jobs and Opportunities in Communities Nationwide
  4. 4.American Bankers Association / Morning Consult (2025). National Survey: Bank Customer Channel Preferences
  5. 5.National Emergency Number Association (2025). 9-1-1 Statistics
  6. 6.HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (2024). National Trends in Hospital and Physician Adoption of Electronic Health Records
  7. 7.Nielsen, The Gauge (2025). Streaming Eclipses Combined Broadcast and Cable Viewing for the First Time
  8. 8.U.S. Census Bureau (2026). Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales, Q1 2026
  9. 9.Synergy Research Group (2025). Hyperscale, Colocation and On-Premises Data Center Capacity Share
  10. 10.Watten, Bistline & Blanford (EPRI / Watershed) (2026). Have Data Centers Raised Your Electric Bill? Causal Evidence from the United States (working paper)
  11. 11.Georgia Public Service Commission (2025). Data Center Fact Sheet & 2025 Georgia Power IRP Proceedings
  12. 12.Data Center Frontier (2024). Dominion Plans for Long-Term Virginia Data Center Power Demand
  13. 13.Constellation Energy (2024). Crane Clean Energy Center: Three Mile Island Unit 1 Restart (20-Year Microsoft PPA)
  14. 14.Talen Energy (2025). Expanded Nuclear Energy Agreement with Amazon (Susquehanna, up to 1,920 MW)
  15. 15.Silicon Ranch (2022). Meta–Silicon Ranch Solar Partnership Across Georgia and Tennessee
  16. 16.U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (current). Regulations for Emergency Stationary Engines (RICE NESHAP & NSPS Subpart IIII)
  17. 17.U.S. Geological Survey (2018). Estimated Use of Water in the United States (Circular 1441)
  18. 18.Microsoft (2024). Sustainable by Design: Next-Generation Datacenters Consume Zero Water for Cooling
  19. 19.Vantage Data Centers (2026). Cooling Without the Drain: How Closed-Loop Systems Cut Day-to-Day Water Use
  20. 20.Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (2022). Water Use and Management Practices on U.S. Golf Courses
  21. 21.U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (current). Summary of the Clean Water Act & NPDES Permit Basics
  22. 22.Loudoun County, Virginia (current). Zoning Ordinance §5-1507 Noise Standards
  23. 23.National Institutes of Health (NIDCD) (current). Noise-Induced Hearing Loss: Common Sound Levels
  24. 24.Loudoun County, Virginia (2025). Data Centers: Official County FAQ
  25. 25.Prince William County, Virginia (2025). 2024 Data Center Industry Tax Revenue Report
  26. 26.Virginia Joint Legislative Audit & Review Commission (2024). Data Centers in Virginia (Report 598)
  27. 27.CBRE (2026). North America Data Center Trends, H2 2025: Atlanta Market
  28. 28.Meta (2025). Data Center Community Action Grants Program
  29. 29.Google (2026). Google Data Centers in Georgia: Community Investment
  30. 30.Microsoft (2025). TechSpark Community Engagement Program
  31. 31.Rutherford County (N.C.) Economic Development (2025). Meta & Isothermal Community College Data Center Institute
  32. 32.Google (2026). Data Center Workforce Development & Skilled Trades Initiative
  33. 33.Center for Strategic & International Studies (2025). The Electricity Supply Bottleneck on U.S. AI Dominance
  34. 34.Government of China (State Council / MIIT) (2023). National Computing Power Action Plan (300 EFLOPS Target by 2025)
  35. 35.Rystad Energy (2026). China's Data Center Capacity on Track to Nearly Double by 2030
  36. 36.The White House (2025). Winning the Race: America's AI Action Plan
  37. 37.Federal Register (2025). Executive Order 14318: Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure
  38. 38.U.S. Department of Energy (2025). DOE Site Selection for AI Data Center and Energy Infrastructure on Federal Land
  39. 39.OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle & MGX (2025). Announcing the Stargate Project ($500B Committed U.S. AI Infrastructure)
  40. 40.Microsoft (Brad Smith, Vice Chair & President) (2025). The Golden Opportunity for American AI (~$80B FY2025 Data Center Investment)
  41. 41.Defense Information Systems Agency (current). DOD Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide (Impact Level 5)