How Many People Work at a Data Center? Construction vs. Operations

Fewer than you might expect once it’s running, and far more while it’s being built. A typical large data center runs with roughly 50 full-time workers once it’s finished, according to Virginia’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC, December 2024), while construction can put about 1,500 workers on site at peak for a single building. The biggest AI campuses announced since 2024 go further, with peak construction crews of 1,000 to 5,000 and permanent staffs of about 100 to 800.

The short answer: construction vs. operations

A data center has two very different workforces. The first builds it: electricians, pipefitters, ironworkers, concrete crews, equipment operators, commissioning agents and project managers. The second runs it for years after it opens: critical facilities technicians, engineers, data center technicians, security officers and managers.

JLARC’s study of Virginia, the largest data center market in the U.S., gives the clearest neutral numbers we found:

• A single data center takes about 12 to 18 months to build, and a full campus can take five years or more.
• About 1,500 workers are on site at the peak of construction for one facility.
• A typical 250,000-square-foot facility runs with about 50 full-time workers, roughly one per 5,000 square feet.
• About half of those 50 are direct employees of the data center company and half are full-time contractors, such as electricians, pipefitters and security staff.

Real projects: announced construction and permanent jobs

Companies and states usually announce two numbers with a new data center: peak construction workers and permanent jobs. The table below lists recent U.S. projects where both numbers were published. These are announced figures, not audited headcounts, and campus projects are often built in phases over several years.

Project	Announced investment	Peak construction workforce	Permanent jobs	Source
Meta, Richland Parish, Louisiana	$10 billion	About 5,000 (peak expected by June 2026)	500+	Louisiana Economic Development (Dec. 2024); Meta (Dec. 2025)
Meta, El Paso, Texas	More than $10 billion (raised from $1.5 billion)	More than 4,000	More than 300	Meta (Oct. 2025, updated Mar. 2026)
Microsoft, Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin (two data centers)	More than $7 billion	More than 3,000	About 500 after the first; about 800 after the second	Microsoft (Sept. 2025)
Anthropic with Fluidstack, Texas and New York	$50 billion	About 2,400 construction jobs	About 800	Anthropic (Nov. 2025)
Meta, Tulsa, Oklahoma	More than $1 billion	More than 1,000	About 100	Meta (Apr. 2026)
Stargate site, Abilene, Texas (Crusoe, for OpenAI and Oracle)	Not stated for the site	More than 1,000 on site (Jan. 2025)	At least 57 required by city agreement; Crusoe expected 100+	Bloomberg (Jan. 2025)

Across these announcements, the peak construction crew is roughly three to more than ten times the size of the permanent staff. Microsoft’s Wisconsin numbers also show how hiring ramps up: the company said in May 2026 that it had hired about 375 full-time workers there so far, with about 125 more planned for the first data center (Wisconsin Public Radio via Urban Milwaukee, May 2026).

Why operations headcount is small

A data center is designed to run with as few hands as possible. Servers are managed remotely, equipment is monitored by building management and power monitoring systems, and the facility is built with spare capacity so one failure does not need a crowd to fix it. A large data hall may only have a handful of people walking it on any given shift.

Construction is the opposite. A large campus needs site work, foundations, steel, roofing, miles of conduit and cable, switchgear, generators, chillers and piping, all installed on a tight schedule. That takes thousands of tradespeople working at once, and then most of them move on.

Who the operations staff are

Because data centers run 24/7, the permanent team is spread across shifts. Many sites use 12-hour rotating shifts, so the 50 or so people JLARC describes are not all on site at once. A typical operations team includes:

• Critical facilities technicians and engineers who monitor and maintain power and cooling equipment around the clock.
• Electricians and HVAC/mechanical technicians, often as on-site contractors.
• Data center technicians who install, repair and replace servers, drives, cables and network gear.
• Controls/BMS technicians who keep the automation and monitoring systems working.
• Security officers at gates, lobbies and control rooms.
• Facility managers, shift leads, safety staff and site administrators.

Meta, describing the roughly 500 operational jobs planned for its Louisiana site, listed electricians, HVAC specialists, server and network technicians, safety and security staff, and engineers (Meta, December 2025). Pay is generally good: JLARC found data center employees and contractors in Virginia earn about $100,000 a year on average, depending on the role and region.

Contractors and vendors on site

Headcount numbers often miss the people who are on site regularly but don’t work for the owner. JLARC found that about half of a typical facility’s full-time workforce are contractors. On top of that, vendors and field service technicians come through for scheduled maintenance on generators, UPS systems, chillers, switchgear and fire protection.

Expansion work also keeps construction crews around after the first building opens. Big campuses are built in phases, so a site can have an operating data hall and an active construction zone next door for years.

Indirect jobs: the ripple effect

Data centers also support jobs off site: equipment manufacturers, electrical suppliers, trucking, hotels and restaurants serving crews, and local services. For example, Louisiana Economic Development estimated Meta’s Richland Parish project would support more than 1,000 indirect jobs on top of its 500 direct jobs (December 2024).

JLARC estimated that the data center industry supported about 74,000 jobs a year in Virginia, counting direct and indirect effects. About 59,000 of those came from construction and about 15,000 from operations. That split shows how much of the job impact comes from building, not running, data centers.

Do data centers create jobs? The honest debate

Yes, but how many depends heavily on what you count, and that is where the arguments start.

The industry view. A PwC study for the Data Center Coalition (May 2026) estimated about 1 million direct jobs in the U.S. data center industry in 2024, and about 5.5 million total jobs supported once indirect and induced effects are included, up 17% from about 4.7 million in 2023. PwC uses a broad definition of the industry, counting data center services wherever they are produced, not only staff working inside data center buildings.

The critics’ view. Food & Water Watch, an advocacy group, argued in a January 2026 brief that the industry’s job claims are overstated. Using Virginia data and BLS figures, it estimated that as few as 23,000 people nationally may have worked in data center operations in 2024, and it pointed out that large tax incentives buy relatively few permanent jobs per dollar invested.

What both sides agree on. Construction employment is large but temporary at any single site, and permanent operations staffing is small relative to the money invested. The disagreement is mostly about definitions: whether to count only people inside the building, the wider “data center services” sector, or every supplier and local business that benefits.

What this means if you’re looking for work

	Construction	Operations
How many jobs per site	Hundreds to thousands at peak	Dozens to a few hundred
How long the work lasts	About 12 to 18 months per building; longer on phased campuses	Long-term, permanent roles
Typical roles	Electricians, pipefitters, ironworkers, operators, commissioning, project managers	Critical facilities techs, data center techs, engineers, security
Schedule	Long days, overtime, often travel and per diem	24/7 coverage, rotating or 12-hour shifts
Where	Wherever the next campus is going up	Fixed site, often in rural or suburban areas

If you’re in the trades, data center construction can mean steady work for years as long as you’re willing to follow projects; browse open construction trades jobs to see where sites are hiring now. If you want to stay in one place, aim for the operations side and watch for new campuses near you: permanent hiring usually ramps up as the first buildings near completion. Our guide to jobs at a data center explains each role, and what is a data center covers the equipment you’d be working on.

One more thing in your favor: operators say hiring is hard. In Uptime Institute’s 2025 global survey (July 2025), nearly two-thirds of operators reported trouble retaining staff, finding qualified candidates, or both. Experience on a data center construction site can also help when you apply for operations roles later, since you will already know the equipment and the safety rules.