Union County, New Jersey

County ranked by announced AI data-center load

Undisclosed Announced AI load

Campuses

Lead operator

CoreWeave

Resi rate Δ (PSE&G)

+15.6%

Home price Δ (3y)

+13.3%

Property tax Δ (3y)

+0.0%

Population (2024 ACS)

579K

Median HH income (2024 ACS)

$103,202

Key takeaways

Union County is 572,549 residents with a $100,117 median household income and a $488,800 median home value. It is the only Northeast urban county in this batch and the only one where a hyperscaler is converting an existing pharmaceutical complex into AI compute.Source: Census ACS 2023 B01003, B19013, B25077 (FIPS 34039)
CoreWeave's $1.8 billion Kenilworth NEST is built into former Merck and Schering-Plough lab space. Merck announced in April 2020 it would move its global headquarters out of Kenilworth to Rahway by the end of 2023, freeing the campus for retrofit.Source: data/sites/data_centers.csv (Kenilworth NEST) + sources[0] (Wikipedia: Kenilworth, NJ)
PSE&G's New Jersey residential rate rose from 17.1 to 19.8 cents per kWh between 2021 and 2023, a 15.6% jump worth about $292 per year on a typical household bill. PSE&G has 2.06 million residential customers across the state.Source: data/cache/utility_rate_yoy.csv (Public Service Elec & Gas Co, NJ)
County home prices rose 13.3% over three years and property tax assessments are flat at 0.0%, the only AI host county in this batch where tax assessments did not move. The CoreWeave project was the first award under New Jersey's new EDA AI tax-credit program.Source: data/cache/realestate_yoy.csv + data/cache/property_tax_yoy.csv (FIPS 34039) + data/sites/data_centers.csv (Kenilworth NEST source URL)

Union County is 34.4% Hispanic, 20.5% Black, 5.6% Asian, and 41.7% white, the only US AI host county with no racial majority. Kenilworth NEST is the first hyperscaler retrofit landing in a true Northeast plurality county.Source: Census ACS 2023 B02001, B03003 (FIPS 34039)
42.4% of Union County households rent rather than own, the highest renter share of any county in this batch. Median gross rent is $1,664 a month, the highest rent in the dataset, so a 15.6% PSE&G rate increase compounds on top of an already squeezed renter base.Source: Census ACS 2023 B25003, B25064 (FIPS 34039)
Unemployment is 6.3% in Union County, the second-highest jobless rate in this batch. CoreWeave's Kenilworth retrofit lands in a labor market where roughly 1 in 16 active workers is currently unemployed, against the same Census reference month.Source: Census ACS 2023 B23025 (FIPS 34039)
Only 2.8% of Union adults are veterans, the lowest veteran share of any AI host county in this batch. The traditional defense-manufacturing labor pipeline that anchors counties like Sarpy or Jackson does not exist here.Source: Census ACS 2023 B21001 (FIPS 34039)