{"id":929924,"date":"2026-10-12T06:36:22","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T06:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/929924\/"},"modified":"2026-10-12T06:36:22","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T06:36:22","slug":"this-graph-of-data-center-spending-compared-to-all-other-construction-will-give-you-chills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/929924\/","title":{"rendered":"This Graph of Data Center Spending Compared to All Other Construction Will Give You Chills"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\tSign up to see the future, today<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">Can\u2019t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph pw-incontent-excluded article-paragraph skip\">Against all odds, the US economy continues to grow at a record-setting pace. Yet as new economic data shows, that growth is anything but healthy, and predicated almost entirely on the AI boom.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph article-paragraph skip\">A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.derekthompson.org\/p\/the-state-of-ai-in-2026in-26-charts\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">new essay<\/a> by podcaster and writer Derek Thompson takes a look at key economic metrics surrounding AI in 2026. Among the most striking is a bar graph showing growth in construction spending, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/councils\/forbesbusinesscouncil\/2023\/08\/16\/using-construction-as-an-economic-indicator\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">key indicator<\/a> of economic stability.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph article-paragraph skip\">Using data from Harvard Kennedy School economist Jason Furman, Thompson shows that growth in data center construction has exploded this year, while all but one other category has regressed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph article-paragraph skip\">By the numbers, data center construction has grown at a rate of 64.5 percent in the most recent year, while new energy infrastructure has grown by 4.1 percent to keep pace \u2014 since demand is growing for electricity to power the AI boom.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph article-paragraph skip\">Everything else has collapsed: multi-family home building fell by 5.6 percent, while healthcare and commercial retail construction both tumbled by 10.1 percent. New educational construction tumbled by 12.6 percent, while manufacturing \u2014\u00a0supposedly a key target for the Trump administration \u2014\u00a0has collapsed, shrinking nearly 24 percent from 2025 to 2026.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"839\" height=\"701\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/image_54df31.png\" alt=\"A vertical bar graph showing a massive rise in data center and energy construction spending growth, while every other category is negative.\" class=\"wp-image-468295\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph article-paragraph skip\">Thompson is perhaps best known for his \u201cabundance\u201d theory, a deregulation-brained <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bostonreview.net\/articles\/the-real-path-to-abundance\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">policy agenda<\/a> with roots in <a href=\"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2024\/09\/neoliberalism-pandemic-third-way-solidarity\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">neoliberal<\/a> economic thought.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph article-paragraph skip\">But if there\u2019s any abundance to be had in the US economy at the moment, it\u2019s clearly coming on the back of AI \u2014\u00a0and with investors growing increasingly skeptical over the sustainability of AI spending, it could only be a matter of time before data center spending tumbles back down to Earth.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph article-paragraph skip\">More on data centers: <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/artificial-intelligence\/retired-air-force-colonel-dangerous-live-near-data-centers\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Retired Air Force Colonel Warns Americans That It\u2019s Dangerous to Live Near Data Centers Because You Could Be Targeted or Killed<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up to see the future, today Can\u2019t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Against&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":929925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":["post-929924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=929924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/929925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=929924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=929924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=929924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}