Data Center Statistics 2026: Power Use Rose 100 TWh While US Demand Rose 8, and Construction Hit $85 Billion

How much electricity do data centers use?

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s December 2024 report for the Department of Energy is the most detailed public estimate of US data center electricity use. It puts consumption at about 60 TWh a year from 2014 to 2016, 76 TWh in 2018, and 176 TWh in 2023. We divided each year by the Energy Information Administration’s total US electricity end use to get the share, which reproduces LBNL’s own 1.9% for 2018 and 4.4% for 2023.

The share more than doubled in five years. Data center use rose by about 100 TWh between 2018 and 2023. Over the same years, total US electricity end use rose by just 8 TWh, from 4,003 to 4,011 TWh. Data centers added about 12 times as many TWh as the whole country did, so everything else, taken together, used less: US end use excluding data centers fell from 3,927 to 3,835 TWh. Year-to-year totals move with weather, so we checked a second start year. From 2019, data centers added about 87 TWh against 57 TWh for the national total.

Data center power consumption in gigawatts and households

176 TWh a year is an average load of about 20.1 GW, running every hour of the year, or about 482 GWh per day. It equals 12% of all electricity that US households bought from utilities in 2023 (1,450 TWh). LBNL’s scenarios for 2028 range from 325 to 580 TWh. At an assumed 50% average capacity utilization, LBNL translates that into 74 to 132 GW of total power demand, and 6.7% to 12.0% of forecast US electricity consumption.

The latest national data show demand still rising. EIA’s total US electricity end use reached 4,195 TWh in 2025, up 184 TWh from 2023, and the first six months of 2026 were 1.1% above the same months of 2025. EIA does not break out data centers in these totals, so the share of that growth due to data centers is not measured directly. Our data centers by state report shows where commercial electricity sales grew fastest since 2019.

Data center construction spending

The Census Bureau has tracked private data center construction as its own category since 2014 (it was folded into general office before that). Spending rose from $1.8 billion in 2014 to $49.7 billion in 2025, about 28 times as much. From January to August 2026, Census counts $45.2 billion, 42% more than the same months of 2025 ($31.9 billion) and already 91% of the full 2025 total.

On a seasonally adjusted annual rate basis, data center construction passed general office buildings for the first time in April 2025, fell back below for four months, and has stayed above it every month since September 2025. By August 2026 it ran at $85.0 billion a year against $45.8 billion for general office, and it was larger than private health care construction ($57.0 billion) and lodging ($23.3 billion). Data centers now account for 11.0% of all private nonresidential construction.

Data center jobs and employers

The closest federal employment series is the Census County Business Patterns count for NAICS 518210, now titled computing infrastructure providers, data processing, web hosting, and related services. In 2023 it had 18,544 establishments, 629,527 employees, and $93.0 billion in annual payroll. Since 2019, employment grew 13.9% and payroll grew 49.3%, while establishments grew only 7.2%, so the industry is adding staff and pay faster than locations. Average pay was $147,665, 2.2 times the $68,342 average across all industries in the same Census file. For the wider IT services picture, see how hosting revenue outgrew the rest of IT services.

NAICS 518210 is not a count of data center buildings. It covers establishments whose main activity is hosting, data processing, or providing computing infrastructure, including offices. Data centers owned by companies in other industries (for example, a retailer’s own facility) are counted in the owner’s industry. The jump between 2016 and 2017 (13,566 to 17,597 establishments) appears in the Census files without a code change, so compare years from 2017 on.

Efficiency and water

LBNL estimates the national average power usage effectiveness (PUE, total facility power divided by IT equipment power) fell from 1.6 in 2014 to 1.4 in 2023, mainly because more servers moved into large hyperscale and colocation facilities. Infrastructure such as cooling fell from about 40% of data center electricity in 2014 to 30% in 2023. Direct water use rose from 21.2 billion liters in 2014 to 66 billion liters in 2023 (about 17.4 billion US gallons), and LBNL projects hyperscale facilities alone could use 60 to 124 billion liters in 2028.

Data center statistics at a glance, year by year

~ marks values read from LBNL Figure ES-1. LBNL publishes no single-year estimates for 2024 to 2027, only a scenario band. CBP data end in 2023.

What this means for MSPs

The server room is losing share. LBNL estimates about 75% of US servers sat in hyperscale and colocation facilities by 2023, and construction at an $85 billion annual rate adds more of that capacity every month. That supports moving client workloads out of closets and into colocation or cloud, with the MSP managing the stack rather than the room. Power is the constraint to check: before signing a multi-year colocation contract, ask the provider what utility capacity is committed for its expansion, especially in the states where commercial electricity sales have grown fastest. For clients who keep equipment on site, LBNL attributes most of the national PUE gain to the move into large facilities and notes that real systems rarely perform as well as their design, which makes small rooms a reasonable target for consolidation projects. Hiring is the last pressure point. Employers in NAICS 518210 paid $148k on average in 2023, more than double the all-industry figure, and MSPs hiring infrastructure technicians compete with them; our MSP industry statistics track pay at managed IT firms.

Frequently asked questions

How much electricity do data centers use in the US?

US data centers used about 176 TWh in 2023, or 4.4% of all electricity consumed in the country, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. That is an average draw of about 20 gigawatts around the clock, and equal to 12% of what every US home bought from utilities that year.

Does the US have enough electricity for data centers?

Data center use rose by about 100 TWh from 2018 to 2023 while total US electricity end use rose by only 8 TWh, so other uses fell to make room. LBNL’s scenarios put data centers at 325 to 580 TWh in 2028, or 6.7% to 12.0% of US demand, which would require 74 to 132 GW of power.

How much power does a data center use per day?

Across all US data centers, 176 TWh a year works out to about 482 gigawatt hours per day in 2023. No federal source reports electricity use facility by facility, so per-site figures in circulation are estimates.

How much is being spent to build data centers?

Private data center construction was $49.7 billion in 2025, up from $1.8 billion in 2014, according to the Census Bureau. In August 2026 the seasonally adjusted annual rate reached $85.0 billion, 11% of all private nonresidential construction.

How many people work in data centers?

The Census industry that covers data processing, hosting, and computing infrastructure providers (NAICS 518210) had 629,527 employees at 18,544 establishments in 2023, with average pay of $147,665. That industry also includes hosting and data processing offices, and some company-owned data centers are counted under their parent’s industry.

How many data centers are there in each state?

Federal statistics do not publish an official count of data center buildings. Our companion report on data centers by state combines a PNNL map of data center facilities with Census establishment counts and EIA electricity sales for all 50 states.

Methodology

References

1. Shehabi, A. et al., 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, LBNL-2001637 (doi:10.71468/P1WC7Q). Accessed October 2026.
2. U.S. Energy Information Administration, Monthly Energy Review, Table 7.6 Electricity End Use. Accessed October 2026.
3. U.S. Census Bureau, Construction Spending (C30), historical value put in place tables. Accessed October 2026.
4. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns datasets, 2012 to 2023. Accessed October 2026.
5. U.S. Census Bureau, 2017 to 2022 NAICS concordance. Accessed October 2026.