Good Jobs First

Good Jobs First is a Washington DC-based non-profit research organisation, founded in 1998, that tracks corporate subsidies through its Subsidy Tracker database, the most comprehensive public record of US state and local corporate incentives. It takes a critical stance on tax-incentive competition, arguing it transfers public wealth to corporations without matching employment gains, a position that draws support from both anti-subsidy conservatives and progressive labour advocates.

A February 2026 Good Jobs First report, Even Cloudier with a Greater Loss of Spending Control, put Virginia's FY2025 data-centre sales-and-use tax exemption cost at $1.94 billion once state and local losses are combined, with Georgia and Texas also each exceeding $1 billion a year. Its moratorium tracker, cited throughout Virginia's own tax-exemption fight, counted at least 12 states with active 2026 moratorium bills, a tally echoed by Uptime Institute's July 2026 analysis of the same shift away from state-level bans toward local zoning fights. Virginia's eventual compromise, a $0.011-per-kilowatt-hour electricity consumption tax effective 1 July 2026, replaced the Senate's proposed capacity-based backup-generator fee after Governor Spanberger warned that ending the sales-tax exemption early risked litigation; the consumption-tax model was adopted as the lower-risk PATH forward.