Report: Promises of Employment Clash with Modest Outcomes at Chile's Data Center

Google and Microsoft are among the top players running the ongoing AI race that doesn’t have an end point at this point, and I don’t really know if there will be in the near future. These tech giants are building data centers around the world. As one can guess, these data centers come with promises of making the region richer tech-wise and creating employment opportunities locally.

Well, this is a story of Chile’s Santiago region, where the new Google data center in Quilicura stands as a symbol of the country’s growing cloud ambitions. However, local officials say that the job creation impact may not match the lofty promises made by tech giants. Now, an investigative report published by Rest of World talks about rather modest on-ground reality.

To catch you up, both Google and Microsoft have highlighted their investments as driving force to create employment opportunities. In June, for instance, President Gabriel Boric said the new data centers in Chile would create more than 81,000 jobs. That’s including nearly 17,300 skilled IT roles, according to Microsoft’s South America representative. The company clarified that this number includes directly hired, indirectly hired, and client-hired positions.

Per the report, after reviewing permit filings for 17 data-center projects, including those run by Microsoft and Google, the publication found only 1,547 full-time staffs were directly employed by both the companies. Most data centers sites posted around 90 positions to fill, with some publishing as low as 20 job openings, according to former workers and local campaigners.

Out of 32 additional centers planned to be built by 11 foreign companies by 2028, filings suggest that there would be 909 new permanent operational jobs. And that too which wouldn’t be filled locally, as per the report. “Those roles are highly specialized and often not filled locally,” said Alexandra Arancibia, a labour-office official in Quilicura.

Economist Diego Cortés from Colombia’s National Pedagogical University added, “Building a data center doesn’t automatically create new demand for jobs.” However, government officials claim that cloud investments contribute to wider economic growth.

So, the question remains, are these data centers creating employment opportunities locally? If that’s not the case, which Rest of World’s report suggests, what else these tech giants can do to ensure that the local employment generation goals are met? That’s not all; with data centers come environmental concerns, and they are hard to ignore.