DATACENTRES will only create a quarter of the jobs projected by tech lobbyists, researchers found today.

A report by environmental think tank Verdant predicted all planned data centres in Britain would directly employ 10,400 people, rather than the 40,000 projected by lobby group TechUK, which has been echoed by the government.

Based on 20 projects with available figures on hiring plans, the findings add to growing public scepticism over the environmental impact of AI-driven investment in data centres.

Concerns over their energy usage, including over water and energy demands, have gone largely unanswered by the government, which defended the rapid rollout of these developments.

Verdant’s report looked at planning applications, company accounts and press releases, and found datacentres already built have directly created fewer than 4,400 jobs.

Researchers argued this represents about 8.6 roles created for each megawatt of power consumed — well below TechUK’s predictions of 43.7 jobs per megawatt.

But the think tank warned that most of the datacentres currently at the planning stage are far larger than those which currently exist and are likely to be far less job-intensive, potentially only creating 1.6 permanent jobs per megawatt.

They also compared datacentre job numbers to those of an average car plant, which creates 400 positions per megawatt of energy used, and to a hospital or health facility, which created more than 3,600 jobs per megawatt.

Researchers focused on long-term positions needed to maintain the centres, rather than the larger number of temporary workers needed for their construction.

Verdant co-director James Meadway said: “We’re being rushed into supporting a frantic pace of datacentre buildout on very flimsy economic grounds.”

Green Party leader Zack Polanski has strongly criticised the government’s decision to designate AI datacentres a critical national infrastructure, urging a moratorium on all new similar projects.

He said: “England and Wales are still facing drought after our hottest summer ever, but these datacentres are set to be given priority access to water.”

A government spokesperson said the report “relies on a deeply misleading jobs-per-megawatt metric, makes false comparisons with hospitals and schools, and appears to confuse electricity capacity with actual consumption.”

A spokesperson for TechUK said its estimates “are built on a published methodology using industry data and standard economic impact assessment techniques,” adding it is “confident they remain a reasonable estimate of the sector’s employment contribution.”