$3.1m per job: does the employment case for data centres stack up?

April 15, 2026 — 3:00am

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As tech giants and local data centres operators race to transform Australia into an Asia-Pacific hub for artificial intelligence, they are demanding access to the nation’s energy grid, water supply and prime land, backed in part by a big number: 935,000.

That’s how many jobs some in the industry say they are indirectly supporting. One operator said data centres “underpin” 935,000 jobs; its chief lobbyist said that many roles were “enabled” by the sector. But there’s good reason to be sceptical.

The statistic on data centre employment appears to come from consulting firm Mandala Partners’ October 2024 report Empowering Australia’s Digital Future, commissioned jointly by five of Australia’s largest data centre operators: AirTrunk, Amazon Web Services, CDC, Microsoft and NextDC.

One of the report’s infographics places 9600 data centre operational jobs alongside a figure of 935,000 broader tech sector jobs under a title reading: “Growing Australia’s data centre workforce will meet future demand and support jobs in the broader tech sector”.

The presentation implies the wider tech workforce depends on data centre expansion here.

For every $100 in data centres, $80 leaves Australia almost immediately

It does not. The 935,000 figure is simply the Tech Council of Australia’s estimate of total technology sector employment, a count that includes everyone from software developers to graphic designers to HR managers and PR staff at........

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