Good Jobs First

With more Amazon workers on SNAP benefits, company offers Whole Foods discounts The company said the discounts are a response to employee feedback, not a reaction to a recent government report.

Virginia’s data center tax giveaways belong in the school funding conversation.
Our research estimates the industry’s increasingly expensive sales tax exemption cost public schools $267 million in potential revenue in fiscal year 2025.
Gov. Spanberger’s new executive order adds some oversight of data center development. But the order leaves the costliest exemption intact, without new protections for school funding.
Our new blog explains the latest.

New York City just announced its largest settlement to date: $131 million from DoorDash for underpaying or refusing to pay at all its drivers. State and local wage enforcement has now surpassed that of the federal Wage and Hour Division by more than ten-fold.
Workers deserve protections regardless of where they are located. While the WHD is not fulfilling its obligations, states that are taking their enforcement commitments seriously should continue to do so, and those that aren’t must strengthen their enforcement so that no worker is left behind.

📣"I have a simple question: Why should funding for my classroom and students depend on Nevada building more data centers?" 📣

"As a public school educator in the Clark County School District, I’m being told data centers are supposed to be good for my students because they might generate money for schools. I don’t buy it.
I have a simple question: Why should funding for my classroom and students depend on Nevada building more data centers?
For years, educators have been told Nevada simply doesn’t have the money to properly fund our public schools. We’ve watched students sit in some of the largest classes in the country. We’ve watched educators leave the profession. We’ve watched Nevada remain thousands of dollars per student behind the national average. Now, suddenly, we’re being told there’s another way: build more data centers.
Data centers have become the latest industry that some are trying to turn into a cash cow for public education. But educators and students should not be used to make another corporate tax scheme more politically attractive. That’s what this looks like: tech interests using the good reputation of public educators to sell a policy that benefits their industry. Nevada absolutely needs to invest more in its public schools, but tying that investment to the continued growth of an industry already benefiting from enormous tax breaks is not the answer.
Other states should serve as a warning. According to an analysis by Good Jobs First, tax breaks offered to data centers reduced Virginia’s state sales tax collections by more than $1 billion. Roughly a quarter of that lost revenue would have supported K-12 public education. Nevada should learn from that experience and repeal the abatements for data centers."
Continue reading this powerful Op-Ed by Jeremy Heckler, a teacher librarian with the Clark County School District in Nevada.

Corporate mercenary is a bipartisan profession The AI industry tapped former Obama aide Jay Carney to rebuild ties with Democrats. He spent years at Amazon undermining privacy protections and fighting AI regulation.

The CHIPS Act promised to bring semiconductor manufacturing back to the U.S. and create good jobs.
Instead, one little-known tax break is shaping up to cost taxpayers $205.6 billion — more than 8x what Congress originally projected.
Add CHIPS grants, and that’s a per-job cost of over $1 million.
And because the tax credit is “as of right,” we don’t even know who’s getting it.
These costs, by the way, don't include *additional* state and local subsidies.
New, from CHIPS Communities United:

The Million Dollar Job: - CHIPS Communities United The CHIPS Act promised to bring back chip production. But its tax credit, initially estimated at $24 billion, is now projected to cost $205.6 billion, more than eight times the original estimate.

Cities are cutting services. Meanwhile, millions in tax revenue are being given away, and that spending often gets little attention in budget debates.
When city budgets get tight, we hear about the cuts: fewer staff, less roadwork, shorter park hours, smaller police and fire recruit classes.
Those decisions happen in public. But tax abatements and other economic development incentives are different. They can cost cities millions in lost revenue without appearing as a budget line-item.
Good Jobs First recently added four years of data from 109 small and medium-sized cities to our database tracking foregone revenue. In 2024 alone, those cities collectively gave up $805 million in tax revenue through abatements. The median loss was $3 million per city.
Dayton, Ohio, shows why this matters. Its tax abatement losses nearly tripled, from $516,274 in 2021 to $1.35 million in 2024.
At the same time, Dayton has faced a shrinking tax base, a downtown office vacancy rate of 37.5%, and a 2026 budget that relies on reserves and cuts to departments, capital projects, equipment and technology — including reductions to police and fire recruit classes.
The $1.35 million Dayton gave up through abatements in 2024 alone could have covered those cuts, with money left over.
Tax abatements = spending.
Cities should debate them that way, alongside the other choices they make about what they can afford.

Pennsylvania’s data center tax break losses are growing faster than state officials once projected, mirroring trends Good Jobs First has documented in Georgia, Texas, Virginia, Ohio, and other states.

As data centers have grown larger and more power hungry, tax breaks written years ago are now applying to facilities far bigger than policymakers originally anticipated, driving revenue losses sharply higher in states that disclose them.

When Pennsylvania’s sales tax exemption took effect in 2022, an analysis projected it would cost $88.6 million in fiscal year 2026-27. The latest estimate for the same year is now $188.4 million – an increase of 113%.

The latest projections also show the program getting much more expensive over time.

Pennsylvania’s latest tax expenditure report projects the exemption will cost $517.2 million in FY 2030-31, up from $41.1 million in FY 2024-25. That is a 1,158% increase in annual cost over six years.

Unlike other states experiencing ballooning losses, the state once imposed spending controls. Pennsylvania’s original data center incentive, created in 2016, operated as a refund capped at $5 million a year. Lawmakers raised the cap to $7 million in 2019. But the lawmakers replacing the capped refund in 2021 with a sales and use tax exemption, a more lucrative incentive to the data center industry but less accountable and transparent to the public. The new exemption lasts up to 25 years for qualifying data centers.

Despite the program’s rising cost, Pennsylvania requires little in return. A project in a county with 250,000 residents or fewer must invest at least $75 million and create 25 jobs. A project in a larger county must invest at least $100 million and create just 45 jobs.

The good news is, Gov. Josh Shapiro just signed an executive order requiring data center developers seeking state permits to meet new GRID standards covering energy, environmental protection, workforce development, transparency, and community engagement.

Those reforms move in the right direction. But Pennsylvania can go even further.

North Dakota’s “sales tax breaks, which are not for construction, ranged from $5.4 million in 2021 to $7.8 million in 2023, then leapt to $15.3 million in 2024 and more than $65 million last year...
In its upcoming special session, North Dakota’s Republican-led Legislature will consider a bill to temporarily ban nondisclosure agreements between industrial projects and government officials. Critics say those agreements keep the public in the dark about data center projects."

What should local leaders be doing to attract and approve projects that provide good jobs—not just any jobs—to their community?
Greg LeRoy, former Good Jobs First's executive director, has sound advice:

"I believe in emerging research about the true chain of causation for bringing good jobs to a community. The first thing you must have is a great place to live. At the top of the list of variables that would define a great place to live is a great public education system, because employers will say: Can I hire from the local labor market? Can I transfer people to this place, and will their families be happy with the quality of life there? How good are the schools in this community?

If you have a great place to live, you attract smart people. We know strivers will pay extra to live in great places. We know people accept higher housing prices to move into great school districts and to move into communities with a better quality of life. There is lots of real estate evidence about that.

Smart people, in turn, attract promising employers."

Interview with Greg LeRoy, Founder of Good Jobs First: Data Centers and their Local Economic Impact Greg LeRoy is the founder and recently retired executive director of Good Jobs First, a “national policy resource center that promotes corporate and government accountability in economic development.” Greg joined the Taubman Center on campus this spring for an HKS-wide event “Bipartisan Blowba...