--- title: "College Graduate Employment Is Cratering Where Data Centers Are Being Built" description: "New research suggests that AI is driving unusually high unemployment in college graduates in Texas, the center of the AI boom." date: "2026-09-04" modified: "2026-09-04" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore.md" url: "https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/college-graduate-employment-is-cratering-where-data-centers-are-being-built" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Finance" - "Future Society" --- # College Graduate Employment Is Cratering Where Data Centers Are Being Built ![IT specialists talk inside a data center.]() *Shutterstock / Futurism* Will AI supercharge the economy? Will the data centers powering it bring prosperity and provide paying jobs to the communities they're built in? Probably not. New research shows that rapid rise of AI has instead coincided with "unusually high levels" of unemployment among college graduates in Texas, the [*Financial Times* reports](). Texas, crucially, is the state with the most data center under construction. Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas found that job postings in the state had dramatically fallen for AI-exposed fields since the release of ChatGPT, disproportionately affecting college graduates. By the first quarter of 2025, postings plummeted by 8 percent compared to jobs that were deemed less exposed to AI, it also found. "These dynamics suggest that recent college graduates, whose unemployment rate rose to unusually high levels during this period of rapid \[generative AI\] adoption, are where the effects of GenAI on employment and earnings are likely to first appear," the researchers [wrote in the analysis](), as quoted by the *FT*. Until recently, Texas and its governor Greg Abbott has embraced the AI data center buildout with open arms. A recent *Reuters* [analysis found]() that requests from data centers and other large power users to connect to the state's power grid soared from about 48 gigawatts in 2023 to more than 474 gigawatts currently, making it one of the fastest growing hubs for AI and cloud computing facilities. But as public backlash against data centers has continued to mount — and with midterm elections looming — Abbott changed his tune and became an AI industry critic, announcing a freeze on new data center connections last month. Along with the myriad concerns around the data center's environmental impact, many fear that the technology that the data centers support will destroy jobs, while the facilities themselves provide little for local economies. The latest research, its authors say, demonstrates the reality of how AI is shaping labor demand in the very area that should be directly benefiting from it. It's not the only research suggesting AI is wiping out entry level jobs — an outcome that industry figures like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have [warned would happen](). A [recent analysis]() by researchers at Stanford's Digital Economy Lab similarly found a marked decline in employment among young knowledge-workers, while the headcount of those working in fields not considered vulnerable to AI automation, including industrial and retail work, rose. "For 22 to 25 year olds, employment is falling in the most AI-exposed jobs and rising in the least exposed jobs," one of the report authors said. There's still a lot of uncertainty around how many jobs are truly being replaced by AI, and whether some of the chaos can be explained as AI being used as an excuse to fire workers for other reasons. But it's brought a demoralizing effect on the workforce. In a [Gallup poll]() conducted over the final three months of 2025, 72 percent of respondents said it was a "bad time" to find a good job. **More on AI:** [*Employees Absolutely Loath AI in the Workplace, Survey Finds*]() ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()