--- title: "You’ll Choke When You Hear How Many Full-Time Jobs a $136 Million Data Center Will Actually Create" description: "A new data center project in Ohio is set to open a pathetic amount of jobs despite a ten-year tax abatement from the state." date: "2026-03-07" modified: "2026-03-07" authors: - name: "Joe Wilkins" job_title: "Correspondent" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jwilkins" url: "https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/data-center-jobs-ohio" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Ethics" - "Finance" - "Future Society" --- # You’ll Choke When You Hear How Many Full-Time Jobs a $136 Million Data Center Will Actually Create ![A man with curly hair is shown with his mouth open wide and eyes looking upward, clutching his throat with both hands as if choking or struggling to breathe. The image has a strong pinkish-red tint and a dark background.]() *Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images* Fit Precast, an industrial concrete company, is dropping $102 million on a new facility in Gastonia, North Carolina, creating [125 new jobs]() for workers throughout the area. Pharmaceutical giant Becton Dickinson is putting $110 million into a manufacturing expansion in Columbus, Nebraska — [120 jobs](). A new automotive venture in Orangeburg, South Carolina is investing $120 million into a new plant, bringing in [nearly 400 jobs](). Now meet Ark Data Centers, an Iowa firm building a $136 million campus expansion in Northeastern Ohio. The project costs more than any of the above, yet its final job count won't be in the hundreds, or even the dozens: instead, it's exactly ten. The Ark project was one of eight developments rewarded with a multimillion-dollar tax break by the Ohio Tax Credit Authority — not on its own initiative, but on the recommendation of JobsOhio, an economic development nonprofit in the state. The data center company's tax break was the largest of the eight, [according to *Cleveland.com*](), and constitutes a ten-year sales exemption at 50 percent, mostly covering newly purchased equipment. Altogether, it represents a state tax exemption of $4.5 million, *Cleveland* reports — to bring in a whopping ten jobs for workers who will, presumably, still have to pay state income taxes. With that miserly ten total jobs being created, it remains to be seen what else Ark plans on bringing into the state. With some 200 data facilities already calling Ohio home, the state is already [drowning in AI infrastructure projects](), which [exhaust municipal governments]() and are threatening to create a [statewide energy crisis](). And unlike companies like Fit Precast, whose jobs in durable manufacturing will likely provide stable work for the community for years, data center jobs are [notoriously precarious](). They're typically staffed by a skeleton crew of low-wage security guards and IT workers, at a huge indirect cost to taxpayers. As labor researcher Greg LeRoy [told *Mother Jones*]() in a recent interview, data center tycoons have so far pocketed over $1 million in state subsidies for every permanent job they created. And though it isn't Ohio, an analysis from nonprofit Food & Water Watch found that the total capital investment it took to open one full-time data center job in Virginia was almost [100 times more]() than similar jobs in other industries. Given that data centers are [wildly unpopular]() with the public and a [horrible investment overall](), it remains to be seen how a project creating ten jobs convinced Ohio to bend over backward for it — and how long it will take taxpayers to demand a change. *Updated to correctly identify the location of Becton Dickinson's new facility.* **More on data centers:** *[Farmer Hailed as Hero for Rejecting Huge Payment to Turn His Land Into a Giant Data Center]()* ## Author At Futurism, I focus on the intersection of technology and power — examining the economics, history, and politics behind today’s dystopian headlines. As a writer, I’m interested in topics ranging from AI’s impact on labor to startups nobody asked for. My prior work includes bylines in Jacobin, Verso, and Blue Labyrinths. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Forbes, The Guardian, MIT Technology Review, Time, The Nation, Mother Jones, The Verge, and Wired. I grew up in Michigan, attending Central Michigan University as well as Ball State University, where I earned a master of music. I now live in Brooklyn with my girlfriend and our cat Ziti. On weekends, you can find me hunched over a cold pint arguing geopolitics with the other transplants. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()