Datacentres in the UK are projected to create only a quarter of the jobs estimated by the tech sector, while consuming vast amounts of energy and water, according to new research from an environmental thinktank.
Verdant, the environmental thinktank, predicts that all currently planned datacentres in the UK are likely to directly employ approximately 10,400 workers. This figure stands in contrast to the more than 40,000 jobs cited in projections by TechUK, the industry lobby group.
The findings emerge amid growing public scrutiny over the rapid expansion of AI datacentres, driven by concerns regarding their significant demand for energy and water resources. Both the Labour Party and the government have publicly defended the rollout, often echoing TechUK's claims regarding job creation.
Verdant’s analysis is based on data from 20 datacentre projects for which staffing levels are publicly available. Information was sourced from planning applications, company accounts, and press releases, supplemented by international comparisons to inform their estimates.
The thinktank states that existing datacentres have directly created fewer than 4,400 jobs, equating to approximately 8.6 jobs for each megawatt of energy consumed. This figure significantly diverges from TechUK’s projection of 43.7 jobs per megawatt.
Looking ahead, Verdant argues that many future projects currently in the planning stage are on a much larger scale, making them less job-intensive. These larger facilities could potentially create as few as 1.6 permanent positions per megawatt. The analysis specifically focuses on permanent workers required for the maintenance and operation of datacentres, excluding the larger, but temporary, construction jobs involved in their buildout.
James Meadway, co-director of Verdant, expressed concern about the pace of development. "We’re being rushed into supporting a frantic pace of datacentre buildout on very flimsy economic grounds," he stated. "Clearly artificial intelligence and related technologies have great potential. But vast new datacentres arrive at significant real costs to local communities and even our climate ambitions, and their use case has to be made by the government and industry – rather than assuming we can build first and then work out why we did later."
To highlight the resource intensity of these facilities, Verdant compared the current rate of 8.6 jobs per megawatt of power used in datacentres with approximately 400 jobs in a car plant and more than 3,600 in a hospital or health facility.
The government has rejected this comparison and questioned Verdant's methodology. A spokesperson commented: "This report relies on a deeply misleading jobs-per-megawatt metric, makes false comparisons with hospitals and schools, and appears to confuse electricity capacity with actual consumption. More seriously, it discounts the wider economic value of compute [computing capacity] and the national security and sovereignty case for building critical digital infrastructure in Britain."
Verdant responded by clarifying that its calculations were based on the electricity capacity that tech firms claim they need. The thinktank contends that this claimed capacity could still prevent alternative developments, even if the completed datacentres do not ultimately use their full allocated power.
In an effort to accelerate planning processes, Labour has classified AI datacentres as critical national infrastructure. Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, has also shown support for the sector, appointing AI minister Kanishka Narayan to his cabinet.
Narayan has advocated for a rapid increase in datacentres, partly on the grounds of national sovereignty. Speaking to The Times last month, he said: "The British public is very clear that it wants strong defence. It wants strong, sovereign capability, it doesn’t just want foreign billionaires to own things that matter to our lives. If we’re being true to those British values, it is impossible to achieve that without building a sovereign level of datacentre capacity in this country."
Conversely, the Green Party in England has called for a moratorium on datacentre construction, while protests have occurred in Scotland, with critics claiming that large-scale projects are being unduly rushed through.
Zack Polanski, the Green Party’s leader in England, stated: "The government is planning to steamroller local opposition so private companies can build datacentres – but it can’t explain what the benefits are. England and Wales are still facing drought after our hottest summer ever, but these datacentres are set to be given priority access to water. Meanwhile, this latest research suggests far fewer jobs may actually be created in constructing and staffing them than the government claims."
In response to the Green Party's call for a "pause," a government spokesperson insisted that such a move would "simply send investment and good jobs abroad, while leaving Britain dependent on overseas computing for the processing of sensitive health and defence data."
A spokesperson for TechUK defended their figures, saying: "Our estimates that the UK datacentre industry supports 43,500 jobs, and could support 40,000 more by 2035, are built on a published methodology using industry data and standard economic impact assessment techniques. The figures were built transparently from the best available industry data at the time, and we are confident they remain a reasonable estimate of the sector’s employment contribution."
