St. Joseph County, Indiana

County ranked by announced AI data-center load

2.2 GW Announced AI load

Campuses

Lead operator

AWS

Resi rate Δ (Indiana Michigan Power)

+5.1%

Home price Δ (3y)

+16.8%

Property tax Δ (3y)

+14.6%

Population (2024 ACS)

273K

Median HH income (2024 ACS)

$66,868

Key takeaways

St. Joseph County's population is 272,574 and has been essentially flat for 20 years (265,559 in 2000). Project Rainier's 2.2 GW AWS and Anthropic build in New Carlisle is the largest single industrial commitment to the county since Studebaker.Source: Census ACS 2023 B01003 + Wikipedia: St. Joseph County, Indiana
Indiana Michigan Power residential rates rose from 15.5 to 16.3 cents per kWh from 2021 to 2023, a 5.1% jump worth about $86 per year per household. The utility serves 422,062 residential customers across the region.Source: data/cache/utility_rate_yoy.csv (Indiana Michigan Power, IN)
County home prices are up 16.8% over three years against a median household income of $64,885 and a median home value of $179,800. The 32.6% bachelor's-degree share is buoyed by Notre Dame, which sits in the same census tract.Source: data/cache/realestate_yoy.csv + Census ACS 2023 B19013, B25077, B15003
Project Rainier is the public-facing name for Anthropic's primary Trainium training cluster. Microsoft separately announced two more campuses in Granger and La Porte, putting Indiana Michigan Power on the hook for more than 3 GW of new AI load across two adjacent counties.Source: data/sites/data_centers.csv (Project Rainier, Granger, La Porte)

Manufacturing accounts for 16.8% of St. Joseph County jobs, less than the next-door LaPorte share but above the Indiana statewide average. Project Rainier inherits a county labor base that has been transitioning out of Studebaker-era manufacturing for 60 years.Source: Census ACS 2023 C24050_001E, C24050_004E (St. Joseph County, IN)
12.6% of St. Joseph residents are Black alone and 10.2% are Hispanic of any race, the most diverse county in the Indiana AI group. The South Bend and Mishawaka core gives the 2.2 GW campus a population profile closer to a Rust Belt mid-size city than to the surrounding rural counties.Source: Census ACS 2023 B02001_001E, B02001_003E, B03003_001E, B03003_003E (St. Joseph County, IN)
14.6% of St. Joseph residents live in poverty and median gross rent is $1,030. The Anthropic and AWS training cluster lands in a county where roughly one in seven residents lives below the federal poverty line, the third-highest rate in this batch.Source: Census ACS 2023 B17001_001E, B17001_002E, B25064_001E (St. Joseph County, IN)
Only 68.8% of St. Joseph housing units are owner-occupied and 4.0% of residents moved in from out of state last year. Project Rainier's load growth hits the highest renter share and the highest in-migration in the Indiana group, the combination that translates utility-rate moves into rent moves fastest.Source: Census ACS 2023 B25003_001E, B25003_002E, B07001_001E, B07001_065E, B07001_081E (St. Joseph County, IN)