The most detailed local estimate comes from a 2026 independent analysis by economists at Indiana University Bloomington and Capital University, which modeled a hyperscale data center campus across a seven-county Northwest Indiana region (Lake, Porter, LaPorte, Jasper, Newton, Pulaski, and Starke) using the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis’s model. For a 1 gigawatt campus — the study’s central case — construction alone would generate roughly $5.45 billion in regional economic output and support an average of 14,651 construction jobs over the three-year build.
Once operational, that same campus would sustain an estimated $691 million per year in regional output — about $16.1 billion over 20 years — while supporting 300 permanent on-site employees, 926 direct jobs including contract and vendor personnel, and 2,090 total jobs when supply-chain effects are counted. A larger 1.5 GW / $15 billion campus scales those figures to roughly $8.18 billion in construction output and just over $1 billion in annual operating impact.
National research offers useful context. The Brookings Institution found that counties receiving their first large data center saw total private employment rise 4–5% over five to six years, construction employment rise about 11%, information-sector employment rise 22%, and wages rise 3–4%.