Data center spending up 10x since 2019 while hiring slows to a crawl
intellectronica · x · 2026-10-05
Dror Poleg previews an online talk on AI and work, with a core thesis: money is pouring in, but jobs aren't following.
- US data center construction spending has grown 10x since 2019, yet per Zillow Research the 3-month average of payroll gains fell to 51,000 in September, down from 179,000 a few years ago.
- Manufacturing already showed this pattern: real factory construction spending more than doubled after 2022 while manufacturing employment barely moved — a preview for office work: more investment and output, not enough hiring.
- A new NBER working paper finds that when technology makes jobs easier, workers become easier to replace by other humans — the job survives but bargaining power erodes.
He calls this a decoupling of economic activity from labor, consistent with his 2019 book Rethinking Real Estate.
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