Small town economics clash with Big Tech agendas

Data centers are nothing new—Facebook broke ground on one in Prineville, Oregon back in 2010, and it's now one of Meta's biggest facilities in the country, joined by a major Apple data center. Local officials say that represents $8 billion in total investment that has transformed this high-desert town of 10,000 people east of the Cascades. But as Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman reports, the transformation has been decidedly mixed.

Prineville once supported half a dozen sawmills running three shifts a day, but by 2010 its timber industry was finished. "Really Prineville, economically and from a community perspective, was dying on the vine," said Caroline Irvin, the town's Director of Economic Development. Unemployment was near 20%, median income near the bottom statewide. Fast forward to today: unemployment is at 6%, median income is among the highest in Oregon. Irvin says that's nearly all down to the data centers, which have employed nearly 2,000 temporary construction workers and created about 450 permanent jobs.

Jason Beebe, the former mayor who now works as a technology trainer, spent 22 years at a local tire company before getting a job at Meta's data center. "They've changed my life," he said. "It gave me a new career opportunity."