Meta's Mark Zuckerberg says AI creates jobs as data centres expands

Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has said that AI is creating jobs rather than eliminating them, pointing to the infrastructure required to support the technology. Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg said that "all the work around AI has net created a lot of jobs because there's all this infrastructure that needs to get created," and added that large-scale displacement has not "played out the way that people feared it might."

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The remarks came after Meta laid off 8,000 employees in May as part of an AI-first restructuring, which is said to impact about 10% of its workforce, while reassigning another 7,000 employees to AI initiatives. The company is also on course to spend between $130 billion and $145 billion on AI infrastructure in 2026, roughly double last year’s outlay.

Buildout drives hiring

Zuckerberg’s argument is centred on the physical expansion needed to support AI. Meta reportedly operates or is constructing 32 data centres worldwide and plans to double its computing power to 7 gigawatts this year, before doubling it again to 14 gigawatts in 2027. Projects on that scale require construction crews, electricians, cooling engineers, and power infrastructure, creating jobs linked to AI’s demand for compute.

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Layoffs and internal response

Inside Meta, the transition to AI was accompanied by job cuts rather than expansion. The layoffs on May 20 began with 4 am emails in Singapore and then moved west through Britain and the United States. At least one employee who had joined within the previous month was among those cut.

Employees marked departures with salad emojis, an internal shorthand for "salute", while offices remained empty after HR asked staff to work from home. Discontent had begun before the layoffs. More than 1,000 employees signed a petition against a programme that records keystrokes, mouse movements, and screen activity to train Meta’s AI models, with no opt-out available on corporate laptops. Employees moved to the new Applied AI and Engineering team were told in writing that participation was not optional.