A new peer reviewed study co-authored by a Ball State University researcher found that data centers in Texas produced a brief bump in construction jobs but no lasting gains in local employment. The findings come as Indiana has disclosed more than $655 million in data center sales tax exemptions.
The study, “Data Centers and Local Labor Markets: Evidence from the Texas Experience,” appears in the Journal of Regional Analysis & Policy. Its authors are Dagney Faulk of Ball State, Michael Hicks of Shenandoah University, and McKenzie Boyce and Brian Whitacre of Oklahoma State University.
The researchers tracked employment in all 254 Texas counties from 2000 through 2024. They compared counties that received any of 64 tax-exempt data centers with counties that did not…