Verdant Publishes UK Data Centre Jobs Estimate Far Below Industry Projection

A new analysis from Verdant puts the permanent workforce for 20 planned UK data-centre projects at about 10,400 people, far below the more than 40,000 additional jobs TechUK projects for the sector by 2035. The gap has turned a debate over AI infrastructure into an argument about which benefits should justify its local costs.

Verdant’s finding is not a count of every job associated with building data centres. It covers permanent workers needed to operate and maintain them, leaving out the larger but temporary construction workforce. The thinktank drew on staffing information available through planning applications, company accounts and press releases, alongside international comparisons.

A narrower measure than the industry forecast

The two numbers also describe different things. TechUK says the industry already supports 43,500 jobs and could support 40,000 more by 2035, using industry data and standard economic-impact assessment methods. Verdant is estimating direct, permanent roles at projects where staffing information is publicly available.

Verdant’s analysis looks less favorable as projects grow. It says already-built UK data centres created fewer than 4,400 direct jobs, or about 8.6 jobs per megawatt of energy capacity. The larger facilities still in planning could create as few as 1.6 permanent jobs per megawatt, according to the thinktank.

The government rejects the comparison

The UK government rejects Verdant’s jobs-per-megawatt framing. It says the measure confuses electricity capacity with actual consumption and fails to account for the wider economic value of computing capacity, as well as national-security and sovereignty considerations.

Verdant counters that it used the capacity technology companies say they need. Even if a completed facility does not use all that power, the thinktank argues, the requested capacity can still displace alternative plans for the electricity system. That is the central methodological split: whether reserved power, direct jobs and compute’s wider uses can be weighed on one common scale.

The buildout has a strategic mandate

The jobs dispute arrives after the government designated UK data centres as critical national infrastructure in 2024. Its proposed regulatory framework would also designate qualifying data centres as essential services, bringing obligations around risk management, resilience and significant-incident reporting.

That policy context explains why ministers do not treat direct employment as the whole case. In response to calls for a pause in construction, the government said a halt would send investment and jobs abroad while leaving Britain dependent on overseas computing for sensitive health and defence data.

What the figures cannot settle

Verdant’s work does not disprove TechUK’s broader employment forecast, and TechUK’s projection does not answer how many permanent staff each planned facility will require. The next policy question is therefore not simply whose number is larger. It is whether the government can make a clear public case for each expansion that separates direct local jobs from the economic and strategic value it expects computing capacity to provide.