Arabic version: مراكز بيانات الذكاء الاصطناعي توفر وظائف بناء، لكن التوظيف الدائم محدود
According to ABC News, data centres can support thousands of workers during construction, but their long-term on-site workforces are comparatively small. The warehouse-like facilities house servers and storage systems that process, store and manage digital data for services including AI systems. Australia already has 251 operating data centres, according to DataCenters.com, with more projects in development.
A Brookings Institution report found that construction of a data centre could support between 1,000 and 10,000 workers, depending on the facility’s size. A Virginia state government report said construction of an individual building usually takes 12 to 18 months and that about 1,500 workers from construction-related industries may be on site at the peak.
After construction, employment drops sharply. A UK government report said data centres are highly automated and directly create relatively modest numbers of jobs, ranging from a few tens to a few hundreds. Figures cited from two UK operators estimated that 20 to 88 full-time employees were required on site. The Virginia report said a 23,226-square-metre facility may have about 50 full-time workers, roughly half of them contractors.
The facilities also require substantial resources. A 1-megawatt data centre is estimated to consume 25.5 million litres of water a year for cooling. Sydney Water projected that data centres could use about a quarter of the city’s annual drinking water by the end of the 2020s, or roughly 87.5 billion litres. The Climate Council said data centres used 2 per cent of Australia’s electricity last year, with that share projected to reach 6 per cent by the end of the decade.
University of Melbourne senior lecturer M. Reza Hosseini warned that a construction boom could tighten the supply of specialised workers needed for housing projects. At the time of writing, SEEK listed more than 1,100 data-centre technician jobs across Australia, including advertised roles in Melbourne and Sydney with salaries reaching $149,000 plus a $14,900 annual bonus.
