A BAAI PUBLIC REPORT - September 2026
For generations, Ohio has been central to the building of America. Ohioans have made the steel, machinery, electrical equipment, automobiles, and infrastructure that powered the country’s rise into an industrial superpower. Yet over the past several decades, too many communities across Ohio have experienced the atrophying of that strength: factories closed, supply chains moved overseas, and investment disappeared.
Artificial intelligence is the path forward to change that. When most people hear “AI,” they picture software, chatbots, or engineers working in Silicon Valley. But the AI economy is far more physical than that image suggests. AI requires enormous amounts of infrastructure. It needs power plants and transmission lines. It needs transformers, cooling systems, fiber, steel, concrete, electrical equipment, and highly skilled workers to build and maintain it. Beyond that, AI enables new types of industries to proliferate, including but limited to advanced manufacturing and precision agriculture.
And increasingly, Ohio is where that work is happening. As Build American AI’s latest report highlights, companies participating in Ohio’s data center sales tax exemption reported roughly $27.2 billion in qualifying capital investment in 2025, up from about $9.6 billion the previous year. That is nearly a threefold increase in a single year. This is not investment confined to one wealthy technology hub. Projects are spreading across communities including Bowling Green, Ironton, Miamisburg, New Albany, Piketon, Trotwood, Van Wert, and Westerville.
That matters because the AI boom unfolding in Ohio looks very different from the technology booms of the past. This one needs electricians. It needs ironworkers, millwrights, pipefitters, welders, HVAC technicians, operating engineers, lineworkers, manufacturers, construction firms, and equipment suppliers. In other words, AI is helping create demand for exactly the kind of middle-class work Ohio has spent decades trying to rebuild.
One of the biggest misconceptions surrounding artificial intelligence is that its economic story begins and ends with job displacement. Ohio is showing another side of the equation.
A Columbus-area electrical union reported that its annual work hours increased 267 percent over 11 years, while its apprenticeship program grew from roughly 250 apprentices in 2015 to about 850 today. An electrical local serving east-central and Appalachian Ohio reported that apprenticeship enrollment grew from 95 in 2022 to more than 900 in 2026.
These are not hypothetical jobs projected decades into the future. Ohio workers are already responding to real demand. And many of these careers pay well above the statewide median wage of $49,380. Median annual wages in Ohio are approximately $93,150 for electrical power-line installers, $74,790 for sheet-metal workers, $74,710 for ironworkers, $73,220 for millwrights, and $64,700 for electricians.
For a young Ohioan, that can mean a path to the middle class without moving to a coastal city, taking on enormous college debt, or leaving the community where they grew up. That is what reindustrialization looks like.
Focusing only on the employees working inside a completed data center misses much of AI’s economic impact. Before a facility ever opens, workers spend years constructing it. Manufacturers produce transformers, switchgear, cooling equipment, structural steel, and backup power systems. Utilities build substations and transmission infrastructure. And once the site is operating, technicians, maintenance workers, security personnel, controls specialists, and electrical and mechanical workers are still required.
That expanding demand is already strengthening Ohio’s industrial supply chain. A power and cooling manufacturer is investing $50 million to expand two Ohio locations, with plans to add hundreds of jobs. A specialty data center infrastructure company in the Miamisburg area has grown its Ohio workforce from roughly 300 employees to more than 1,100. An Italian transformer manufacturer selected Trotwood for its first North American plant, a project expected to support more than 200 skilled manufacturing jobs.
In Athens, even a woman-owned metal fabrication business has benefited from growing demand. That is the larger opportunity AI creates. Every major AI campus represents a massive order for things that must be manufactured, transported, installed, maintained, and upgraded. The more of that work Ohio companies capture, the more the AI buildout becomes an engine for rebuilding the state’s industrial base.
Ohio’s small businesses are also positioned to participate in this new economy, as they represent 99.6 percent of Ohio firms, employing roughly 2.2 million people, or about 44 percent of the state workforce. Some will benefit directly as contractors and suppliers. Others can benefit by using AI themselves.
The report points to AI tools helping smaller employers handle communications, customer service, inventory management, scheduling, and administrative work more efficiently. The practical result is often not replacing workers, but giving them more time to focus on customers, production, sales, and skilled work.
Ohio has already begun supporting that transition through AI training and certification initiatives. Continuing that work can help make sure AI-driven productivity gains are available not only to Fortune 500 companies, but also to manufacturers, healthcare providers, contractors, logistics firms, and Main Street businesses throughout the state.
The local benefits can be substantial when projects are structured correctly. New Albany offers one example. Its information-technology and mission-critical cluster has attracted more than $16.2 billion in private investment and roughly 2,900 jobs across 13 companies. In 2025, a single hyperscale campus generated municipal revenue equivalent to the city’s 2 percent income tax on $178 million in payroll. Officials have also testified that early projects helped finance roughly $65 million in water, sewer, road, and other infrastructure.
That does not mean every project automatically produces the same results. Ohio must continue making sure large projects pay for the infrastructure they require, protect existing ratepayers, use water responsibly, and deliver measurable benefits to local communities.
The state has already taken important steps in that direction, including policies designed to ensure that large data center customers bear more of the financial risk associated with the electricity infrastructure needed to serve them. Growth and accountability do not have to be competing goals.
Perhaps the most important lesson from the report is that Ohio should not view these projects as isolated data center announcements. They are pieces of something much larger.
The country is building the physical infrastructure required for a new general-purpose technology, much as previous generations built the electric grid, interstate highways, and the factories that powered America’s industrial rise. Ohio has the workforce, industrial heritage, manufacturing capacity, infrastructure, and institutions to play a leading role.
The question now is whether policymakers will help turn today’s investment boom into durable prosperity. That means expanding apprenticeships, strengthening Ohio suppliers, helping small businesses adopt AI, protecting families from infrastructure cost shifting, and maintaining a regulatory environment where investment and innovation can continue.
It also means recognizing that artificial intelligence is not something merely happening on computer screens thousands of miles away. It is already creating work in Ohio factories, construction sites, research institutions, hospitals, small businesses, and communities. Ohio helped build America’s last industrial age. With the right policies, it can help build the next one, too.
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