One winter morning in Quilicura, Chile, plumes of water vapor rose out of a warehouse-like building that serves as Google’s only operational data center in Latin America. Inside, vast halls of servers power the cloud, the invisible infrastructure that stores data and powers artificial intelligence. At 8 a.m. last month, when Chileans usually report for work, the campus looked empty, except for security guards who approached the gates when anyone loitered for too long.
Data centers like this are touted as engines of growth. The Chilean government and technology companies like Google and Microsoft have said they will create thousands of jobs in the economy. In June, President Gabriel Boric announced that Microsoft’s hyperscale data center cluster would generate over 81,000 jobs. At the same event, Microsoft’s South America representative, Fernando López Iervasi, said those would include both direct and indirect positions created by clients and partners. Some 17,278 would be skilled IT jobs.
Chileans celebrated Boric and Iervasi’s promises on social media at a time when it had become harder to find jobs amid weak economic growth. Chile’s unemployment rate has hovered over 8% since 2023.
While the companies’ jobs estimates promote economy-wide impacts, government permit filings for individual sites reviewed by Rest of World tell a more specific story. An analysis of 17 data center projects that underwent environmental review since 2012 shows they would directly hire no more than 1,547 full-time operations employees. These include projects operated by Google and Microsoft. The facilities on average offer about 90 positions, and some have as few as 20. Former workers and local campaigners told Rest of World that most of the positions are in security and cleaning.
Construction workers inside Google’s data center in Quilicura. Cristobal Olivares for Rest of World
Another 32 data centers are planned to be built by 11 international firms by 2028, according to InvestChile, the government’s investment agency. Data obtained through an information request by researcher and Mozilla senior fellow Paz Peña shows those projects would add only 909 permanent positions during the operational phase, which lasts about 30 years.
“I’ve only found [employment] bubbles. It’s worrying that we have expectations that won’t be met,” Peña told Rest of World.
Microsoft confirmed Iervasi’s job estimates. In Chile, the company has helped train over 330,000 people in digital skills and helped connect another 300,000 rural residents to the internet, Zenovio Alarcón, a spokesperson for Microsoft told Rest of World.
Google and the Chilean ministry of labor didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Artificial intelligence and cloud computing have led to a global boom in data centers, with nations deploying incentives and tax breaks to attract investments. Data center capacity is expected to triple by 2030, raising concerns about the environmental impacts of the resource-hungry infrastructure. The employment potential of data centers has also been questioned in the United States.
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