A New York county approved nearly $77 million in tax breaks for a JPMorganChase data center expansion that is expected to create just one permanent job.
First reported by New York Focus, the incentive package supports the expansion of a data center in Orangeburg, a community near the New Jersey border. According to the outlet, no members of the public attended a 2024 hearing held by the Rockland County Industrial Development Agency (IDA) to oppose the proposal. Two weeks later, the agency approved the subsidy.
Now, watchdog groups say the subsidy amounts to the largest per-job incentive of its kind in the U.S.
“$77 million per job is by far the largest government subsidy ever recorded within the United States, possibly the world,” government accountability group Reinvent Albany said. “Subsidies of $2m per job are extremely rare and typically even the most controversial mega-deals cost less than $500,000 per job.”
Kasia Tarczynska, senior research analyst at Good Jobs First, also criticized the deal, saying: “The county is giving away quite a lot of public money in exchange basically for nothing.”
Local officials, however, argue that focusing only on permanent job creation overlooks the project’s broader economic impact.
Steven Porath, executive director of the Rockland County IDA, said the expansion is expected to generate more than 1,400 temporary construction jobs and deliver more than $100 million in local economic benefits.
“It’s a misconception to say there’s one person sitting in that data center,” Porath said.
He also argued that evaluating subsidies solely on a per-job basis is outdated.
“If that is how you’re going to narrowly look at it… anybody would say that’s ridiculous,” Porath said. “But that doesn’t take into account all the other economic factors of that data center sitting in our community.”
Over the past decade, Orangeburg, located along the Palisades Parkway, has emerged as a data center hub.
Bloomberg established a data center there in 2014, followed by other major players, including JPMorganChase, which secured its first subsidy agreement with the county IDA in 2017. The bank later returned to the IDA in early 2024 to seek additional incentives for an expansion of the site.
Like existing facilities in the area, the expanded center will support the growing demands of the financial sector, including cybersecurity, trading operations, and artificial intelligence.
JPMorganChase expansion is ongoing and is expected to be completed by 2028.
In March, it was reported that the Ohio Tax Credit Authority approved a $4.5 million state tax exemption for Ark Data Centers’ $136 million expansion in northeastern Ohio, a project expected to bring just 10 full-time jobs.
The exemption has drawn scrutiny due to the project’s relatively limited job creation compared to other recent developments. For instance, Fit Precast’s $102 million facility in North Carolina is expected to add 125 jobs, while Becton Dickinson’s $110 million expansion in Columbus will create 120 positions.
