Elena VossSeventy-six.
That is the year-over-year rise in average wholesale power prices on the PJM grid in Q1 2026. PJM is not a single utility. It is the US grid — 65 million customers across thirteen states from Virginia to Illinois, the largest interconnection in North America. The cause Bloomberg identified, the cause PJM identified, the cause Reuters had already projected nine months earlier: rampant demand from data centers. The projection in mid-2025 was a 20%+ rate increase. The realized number is 3.8x that.
76% is not in the CPI's energy basket. It is the wholesale clearing price utilities pay before passing it along. It is on the way to the bill.
The Numerator
The same quarter the bill grew, the revenue grew. The Information reported that 34 leading AI startups are now generating roughly $80 billion in annualized revenue, up 112% in six months. Anthropic and OpenAI capture 89% of it. The two companies, alone.
The wealth correlate is more concentrated than the revenue. Over the last five years, an estimated 10,000 people — employees at Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Nvidia, Meta, and the founders of AI companies — have crossed $20 million in equity wealth. At the top of the same distribution, the FT priced the broader effect in December: the top 10 US tech billionaires added $550 billion+ to their combined net worth in 2025, taking the group to $2.5 trillion by Christmas Eve.
The ratio is the story. The 76% is what 65 million ratepayers pay. The 89% is what two cap tables collect. The numbers are not the same number measured twice. They are mirror images on opposite sides of the same ledger.
The Jobs Line
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its 2025 occupational data this week. Employment in 18 AI-exposed occupations declined 0.2%; the broader US labor market grew 0.8%. The gap is one percentage point — small enough to miss in a headline. But it is the second consecutive year of the same direction, in occupations the BLS classified as exposed before the data came in. The IT sector's specific unemployment rate rose from 3.6% to 3.8% in April alone, 13,000 jobs shed in a single month.
Industry pushback exists. Some economists quoted in the BLS coverage argue that AI is not the cause — that post-COVID rebalancing, immigration policy, and tariff disruption explain more of the divergence than AI does. The counter-argument is real. The pattern is also real. When the same direction appears in two consecutive years, across exposure categories defined a priori, the direction is not noise.
The Political Response
The denominator is starting to vote. State lawmakers introduced twelve data center moratorium bills in 2026 alone. Maine passed one. New York proposed a three-year moratorium. This week, Hill County, Texas — facing eight proposed data centers — passed what may be the state's first county-wide ban. The opposition is spreading in regions led by both Democrats and Republicans.
None of these bills redistributes the gains. They constrain capex. They do not touch the cap table. The legislative system is set up to permit or deny construction; it is not set up to share the upside of construction it permits. The political response, by design, can only address the cost side.
Compared to What
The PJM 76% needs a baseline. Reuters projected 20%+ rate increases in mid-2025 — already considered a problem then. The realized number is 3.8x that projection. The 2023 increase, by comparison, was inside historical noise.
The BLS divergence needs a baseline. AI-exposed occupations and the broader labor market moved in line, within rounding, through 2022 and 2023. The two lines started separating in 2024 and accelerated through 2025. Two years of separation is not a quarterly anomaly. It is a regime.
The wealth concentration needs a baseline. The top 10 US tech billionaires' net worth grew roughly 29% in 2025, in a year the median US real wage grew less than 1%. One cohort's net worth grew at thirty times the rate of the cohort everyone else is in.
Seventy-Six
By any reasonable benchmark, a 76% one-year increase in wholesale prices on the largest US grid is structural, not noise. The 2024-2025 BLS divergence is the second year in the same direction. The wealth concentration is the second consecutive trillion added to ten people. The same chart shape appears in every ledger: gains compressing toward two companies and ~10,000 people; costs broadening to 65 million ratepayers, the workforce of 18 occupations, and twelve state legislatures.
76% is not the price of electricity. It is the down payment on AI capex, billed to the people not on the cap table.