Good Jobs First

Friday roundup: On being a fan of the World Cup without being a fan of the FIFA World Cup 2026™ Before we start with this week's roundup, a note about the World Cup: I'm enjoying it! The one-game knockout format, even in its dumb expanded iteration, is great for generating drama, and when you mix in international politics and colonial history, you get even more opportunities for hilarity. But....

Good union jobs and public accountability shouldn't be an either/or.

In a new interview, Good Jobs First's Anthony Elmo talks to IBEW Local 24's Rico Albacarys about data center construction jobs, tax subsidies, and what developers should guarantee in return for public dollars.

Q: You’ve pushed back on the idea that data center construction creates only “thin” jobs. From your perspective, what are critics missing about how construction workers build long-term careers from project-based work?

A: Anyone working in construction understands that we work on “temporary projects” because we quite literally work ourselves out of a job. The goal is always to build as safely and efficiently as possible and move on to the next project. Large-scale infrastructure projects provide longer timelines within that reality. For example, a data center campus in Frederick County has a roughly 15-year work outlook across phases. That is not a short-term employment impact in any meaningful sense.

We hear the same framing with clean energy projects like offshore wind and solar. To characterize construction jobs as “thin” minimizes the economic impact of construction workers. Union tradespeople build 30–40 year-careers by moving from project to project, with family sustaining wages, healthcare, and retirement benefits. Careers are sustained through a pipeline of projects, not permanence at any one site.
Continue reading the full interview:

The fiscal outlook for data center tax breaks just got a lot cloudier.
New disclosures show states are losing billions more than previously estimated; 14 states still fail to report the cost of their data center tax exemptions at all.
Consider:
📈 Georgia raised its FY 2026 estimate to $2.5 billion.
📈 Texas projects $9 billion in losses over five years.
📈 Virginia's annual cost has reached nearly $2 billion.
📈 Ohio disclosed $1.6 billion in losses in 2025 and then paused new subsidy applications.
When costs keep soaring and transparency is still missing, it's time for states to hit pause. Taxpayers deserve to know what these deals really cost before even more public revenue disappears into the cloud.
Read our new report:
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“Every dollar we subsidize a big tech company is a dollar we can’t put into public schools,” Good Jobs First's Anthony Elmo told KTSM 9 News.
Over the next two years, Texas is expected to lose over $3 billion to data center tax breaks.