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Love them or hate them, data centers are coming out of the ground like weeds right now in North America, where JLL says more than 66 gigawatts (GW) of capacity is currently being built. Nearly all (95%) of that capacity has already been claimed in an industry that’s posted low vacancy rates of just 1% over the last three years. For context, 1 GW of continuous power can support about 800,000 homes.
The organizations jockeying for space in the new facilities include:
- Hyperscalers (e.g., Microsoft, Amazon, Google) account for about 59% of that capacity.
- Neoclouds (Lambda, CoreWeave, Crusoe) make up 11% of it
- Pure-play AI companies (OpenAI, Anthropic) account for about 7%
As the rising AI tide continues to “lift all boats,” so to speak, the multiplier effect is reaching other areas of the economy outside of technology and construction. Industrial real estate (i.e., warehouses, manufacturing plants, distribution centers, among other facilities) is one sector that’s feeling some fresh momentum, according to a new Cushman & Wakefield report.
The Industrial Ripple Effect
In From Megawatts to Multipliers: The Data Center Effect on Industrial Demand, Jobs and Local Revenue, the real estate firm explores the relationship between data center development and industrial real estate demand, and how both are generating broader economic activity across the U.S.
In analyzing more than 388 million square feet of industrial leasing across six data center markets between 2022 and 2025, Cushman & Wakefield says businesses tied to the data center ecosystem accounted for 10.4% of all new industrial leasing activity during the period. And as AI investment has accelerated, that share climbed to a record 14.4% in 2025, with data center-related leasing increasing 44% year over year to 13.5 million square feet.
“Much of the conversation around data centers has focused on what happens inside the facility,” says Cameron Martin, global research manager, in a press release. “Our research shows there is also a significant economic story unfolding beyond the data center itself. As new facilities come online, they create demand for an ecosystem of manufacturers, contractors, suppliers and service providers that lease industrial space, hire workers and contribute to local economies.”
Tracking Job Generation
For the new report, Cushman & Wakefield assessed industrial leasing activity in Atlanta, Austin/San Antonio, Chicago, Dallas, Phoenix and Virginia. Using its own leasing data and regional economic modeling, it evaluated the broader economic effects associated with data center-related industrial demand and found that:
- Together, these markets contain approximately 19.6 gigawatts of operational data center capacity, with another 11.8 gigawatts currently under construction.
- Across the six markets that Cushman & Wakefield studied, industrial leasing tied to the data center ecosystem supported an estimated 33,000 to 50,000 initial industrial jobs between 2022 and 2025.
- Those jobs generated an estimated 2.5 new jobs for every direct industrial job created.
- This created somewhere between 81,000 and 124,000 total jobs and approximately $11.6 billion in annual gross economic output.
Based on the average impacts across the six markets, Cushman & Wakefield says every 100 megawatts of new data center development is associated with approximately 365,000 square feet of industrial leasing, 1,285 initial and downstream jobs, $110 million in annual wages, $344 million in gross economic output and approximately $15 million in annual fiscal benefits.
“AI is driving one of the largest infrastructure expansions we’ve seen in decades,” John McWilliams, head of data center insights, says. “Understanding its economic impact means looking beyond the buildings themselves to the broader industrial ecosystem that enables them. Those multiplier effects are becoming increasingly meaningful for developers, occupiers and the communities where this investment is taking place.”
