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The UK Government is using “hugely inflated jobs estimates” in order to justify the construction of hyperscale data centres, campaigners have claimed.

Countryside charity Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS) highlighted “preposterous” figures on the employment created by such developments.

It now wants to see “far more scrutiny of the claims” from both the Government and developers with regard to data centre jobs.

APRS issued the plea as it published a report on the issue, but the UK Government insisted the research “fundamentally misrepresents how jobs are counted for major infrastructure project”.

It comes weeks after UK Technology Secretary Liz Kendall visited Scotland’s first AI growth zone in Lanarkshire, claiming developments there could create 3,400 jobs in the coming years.

APRS said it is concerned the Government is not estimating jobs accurately citing the case of the £10 billion AI growth zone announced for Northumberland in 2024.

The APRS report said while the Government had said the zone would support 4,000 jobs, “later clarification revealed that this total included 1,200 construction roles and 2,700 indirect and induced jobs, meaning the data centre itself would only directly employ 100 people”.

APRS also analysed data centre employment in northern Virginia in the US, which has the “largest accumulation of data centres in the world, constituting 13% of all reported data centre operational capacity globally”.

Here it found investment into data centres had totalled 71 billion US dollars (£53.4 billion) in the past decade, adding this “dwarfed investment in other sectors” such as manufacturing which had received 34 billion US dollars (£25.6 billion).

APRS  which is already calling for a moratorium on new hyperscale data centres in Scotland said: “Data centre investment was extremely ineffective in creating jobs, creating only three jobs per 100 million US dollars invested.”

In contrast, it said manufacturing in the area had created 168 jobs for the same investment.

APRS director Kat Jones said: “It’s about time the hyperscale data centre developers were called out on their ludicrously inflated job projections.

“Data centres famously employ extremely few people, and have enormous environmental impacts, so we should expect more scrutiny of exactly what benefits hyperscale AI data centres would bring to Scotland.

“We have found that data centres tend to employ far fewer than 100 staff, usually between 20 and 50, but we are being told that the proposed hyperscale data centres will each create thousands of jobs.

“Developers and the UK Government seem to be taking the actual estimate of jobs, adding temporary construction and indirect employment, and then assume that each of these jobs create up to six additional jobs. This is the only way we think it would be possible come up with these preposterous figures.

“The developers and the Government need to stop using hugely inflated jobs estimates to justify these hyperscale data centres.

“They will have to find a more plausible reason to legitimise the sheer quantities of energy, land and water that will be diverted from the Scottish economy at large, to the purpose training US big tech’s AI models.”

A UK Government spokesperson said: “This report fundamentally misrepresents how jobs are counted for major infrastructure projects.

“We have never claimed that thousands of people will work inside a data centre day to day. Our figures include construction, supply chain and wider jobs across the economy, which are real roles that bring real benefits to local communities.

“AI data centres are enabling infrastructure, like energy networks or transport. Judging them solely on permanent on-site headcount ignores the investment, capability and job opportunities they unlock.

“The alternative is to send that growth and those jobs overseas, while buying back the compute from abroad.”