ATLANTA — Data centers in Georgia did not produce the same high payback in exchange for nearly half a billion dollars in tax breaks as reported by state auditors last month, according to a correction issued Wednesday.
In a report first released on Christmas Eve, the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts said the state effectively gave away $474 million in the fiscal year that ended in July by exempting data centers from some taxes.
In exchange, auditors said, data centers created 28,350 construction-related jobs in 2025, adding $3.4 billion to the state economy. And they created another 5,471 data center operations jobs, for an additional $823 million injection into the state economy.
But on Wednesday, the state agency revised those numbers. Data centers produced less than a third as many jobs and less than a third as much economic value, they wrote in a summary of a full report by the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia.
Data centers actually produced 8,505 construction jobs that added $1 billion to the economy and 1,641 operations jobs for another $247 million added.
