America’s data-center boom creates cranes, power demand, and local investment, but it does not automatically protect the white-collar workers living near it. Reporting from the heart of that buildout shows the strange labor split of AI: physical infrastructure can rise while college-graduate job security weakens.
That tension matters because AI’s economic story is often told as a national productivity win. On the ground, the benefits and costs may land in different places. Communities may host the infrastructure while workers in nearby offices face automation pressure from the very systems those data centers support.
The useful question is whether AI investment creates enough new work to offset the work it changes. Local leaders will increasingly judge data-center projects not only by tax revenue and construction jobs, but by whether the broader AI economy gives residents a durable path forward.
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