Credit: Titan Solar Power
The U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) has released the 2023 U.S. Energy and Employment Report (USEER), a comprehensive study designed to track and understand employment trends across the energy sector. As the private sector continues to announce major investments in American-made energy, the 2023 USEER shows that the energy workforce added almost 300,000 jobs (+3.8% growth) in 2022.
Clean energy jobs increased in every state, reflecting increased investments in part because of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda. Clean energy jobs grew 3.9%, adding 114,000 jobs nationally and increasing to over 40% of total energy jobs. Clean energy technologies, such as solar and wind, accounted for more than 84% of net new electric power generation jobs, adding over 21,000 jobs (+3.6% growth), and jobs related to zero emissions vehicles saw nearly 21% growth, adding over 38,000 jobs. The growth in clean energy jobs was faster than last year’s robust overall job growth, reflecting increased investments and jobs.
“Today’s report shows that the clean energy transition is accelerating, with job growth across every pocket of America, and that unionized employers are filling these new positions with much more ease than non-unionized employers,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “Thanks to President Biden’s historic Investing in America agenda, we expect to see steady growth of jobs to make and build a resilient and clean energy system offering good-paying and secure employment opportunities to America’s workers across the country.”
USEER is a summary of national and state-level employment, workforce, industry, occupation, unionization, demographic and hiring information in key energy technology groups: Electricity Production and Generation; Transmission, Distribution, and Storage; Fuels; Energy Efficiency; and Motor Vehicles and Component Parts. The USEER began in 2016 to better track and understand employment within key energy sectors that have been difficult to impossible to follow using other publicly available data sources. The study combines surveys of businesses with public labor data to produce estimates of employment and workforce characteristics.
Clean energy sector experiencing significant job growth
- Clean Vehicles: All clean vehicle jobs — those in battery electric, plug-in hybrid and hydrogen/fuel cell vehicles — exceeded pre-COVID-19 employment levels. The most rapid growth was in battery electric vehicle jobs, which added more than 28,000 jobs (increasing by 27%). This is almost as many added jobs as in the gasoline and diesel vehicle sector, but at a growth rate that was 17-times faster.
- Solar: Solar is the electric power generation technology that employs the most workers. There were 12,000 new jobs in solar in 2022 (+3.7% growth).
- Wind: There were 5,000 new jobs in wind (+4.5% growth).
- Geothermal: The geothermal workforce added 1,000 jobs, growing by 5.0% in 2022.
States experiencing rapid job growth in the clean energy sector
Clean energy jobs grew across all 50 states and D.C. The top-three states for clean energy jobs growth are:
- California, which added 13,000 jobs (+3.2%);
- West Virginia, which added 7,000 jobs (+19%); and
- Texas, which added 5,100 jobs (+3.5%).
“This new data from the 2023 U.S. Energy and Employment Report shows strong growth in energy jobs, and as investments from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act really start to gear up, I expect we’ll see this growth accelerate over the next few years,” said U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH).
News item from DOE
