Amazon Data Center Deal in Ohio Includes 1,000 Jobs

Amazon is building a major hub in Ohio and the jobs are following in tow. In addition to a massive $1.2 billion Amazon data center project across three townships, the company has committed to creating 1,000 jobs.

The deal was brokered by Ohio’s privatized job creation entity JobsOhio. The jobs will average about $80,000 yearly.

As part of the arrangement, Amazon will also start collecting sales tax on online orders in the state, a standard practice when the giant sets up shop within a given state.

The company has received generous tax breaks for the Ohio data center project. Most of the speculation around job creation was a much lower figure, given data centers typically don’t create many permanent jobs within a facility.

However, Ohio will act as more than just an Amazon data center hub for servers, but also a hub for its people. The 1,000 figure includes jobs at the company’s fulfillment centers.

When looking at data center job creation numbers, the effect on the local economy extends far beyond the data center's walls. While an actual facility will have a limited number of full-time workers within, the data center helps surrounding businesses and economic activity thrive.

Amazon now touts more than one million Amazon Web Services customers and more than 275 million retail customers. It has 50 fulfillment centers with median pay a third higher than traditional retail stores, according to the company.

JobsOhio has been criticized in the past for lack of transparency, so the Amazon news is a big win for the state's economic development arm.

Gartner in its recent Infrastructure-as-a-Service Magic Quadrant report estimated that Amazon had 10 times the cloud compute capacity than the next fourteen IaaS providers combined.