Counting the Clean, Traditional, and Fossil Fuel Energy Jobs in the United States
The clean energy economy has grown rapidly over the last ten years. According to the 2016 E2 report “Clean Jobs America,” over 2.5 million Americans are now employed in the clean energy industry. But how many jobs are in other energy-related areas, like fossil fuels? This post explores and compares the number of jobs in all energy sectors of the United States.
The US Energy & Employment Report counts all energy jobs
The most recent comprehensive survey of US energy jobs is the 2017 United States Energy & Employment Report (USEER) by the US Department of Energy. The USEER was established by DOE Secretary Ernie Moniz in order to quantify all of the energy-related jobs in the United States. Official United States labor statistics use a system called the “North American Industry Classification System, which breaks down the economy into roughly twenty main industries. Unfortunately, many energy-related jobs like solar installations or efficiency retrofits of buildings do not have their own NAICS categories, and are thus systematically under-counted. The USEER solved this problem through a comprehensive survey of representative businesses to understand how many energy-related jobs exist within each NAICS industry.
The main takeaway from the report is that there are a lot of energy jobs in the country. To be precise, the USEER identified 7,836,647 energy-related jobs in five different categories as of the first quarter of 2016. This represents 5.6% of all jobs, public and private, tracked in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. Motor vehicles and their component parts provide the largest source of energy-related employment, while Electric Power Generation provides the least number of energy-related jobs. The exact number of jobs in each category can be determined from the chart below.
Three Types of Energy Jobs: Clean, Traditional, and Fossil Fuel
Since different types of energy jobs have different implications for climate policy, I sorted the various subcategories of energy jobs into three types. First there are the “Clean energy jobs” (indicated in blue in the above chart). These jobs are in new industries like solar, wind, cellulosic biofuels, battery storage, and electric vehicles. We will need to create a lot more clean energy jobs, and create them quickly, to have a chance of meeting the climate targets agreed to within the Paris Climate Accord and prevent full-scale climate catastrophe. Then there are the “Traditional energy jobs” (the orange in the chart) which will need to be transformed. Some examples of these traditional employers are standard electric transmission and distribution companies and automobile manufacturers. The country certainly still needs the work provided by these industries, but those traditional jobs will need to shift towards work focused on hyper-efficient electricity grids and producing zero-carbon vehicles. Finally, there are the “Fossil fuel jobs” (indicated in grey in the above chart) which need to be phased-out through a just transition. These are jobs that extract, transport, or burn fossil fuels.
Summing up the total energy jobs in the country gives a good sense of how far along we are in the transition to a clean energy economy. The good news is that clean energy has a higher share of the total energy economy (34% of energy jobs) than fossil fuels (17%). However, most energy jobs still remain in the traditional category (49%). New policies are needed to change these traditional energy companies into businesses that advance a clean and equitable energy economy.
The table below provides a more detailed view of the US energy economy by showing jobs sorted by their USEER sub-category and energy type. You can view the input data in this spreadsheet or download the original USEER data, which also includes details on the energy economy in each individual state.
The Next USEER Will Be Released by the Energy Futures Initiative
While the 2017 USEER remains the most comprehensive survey of the US energy economy, the data used in the report is already quite dated. The survey methodology relied on jobs numbers from the first quarter of 2016. This would not be a problem if the Department of Energy had produced a new USEER for 2018, as it has for the past two years. Unfortunately the new DOE Secretary Rick Perry decided to pursue a different agenda.
Luckily, Ernie Moniz does not need to be Secretary of Energy to continue his work on advancing the clean energy economy. Last May Moniz launched a non-profit called the Energy Futures Initiative (EFI), which will use advance “strong, fact-based, analytically grounded, technically sound approaches to energy, technology, and policy challenges.” The EFI’s website makes the organization appear somewhat like Moniz’s Department of Energy in exile.
One of the big EFI projects for this year is a new USEER, expected to be released in April 2018. The EFI teamed up with the National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO) to produce the document. EFI also brought back former DOE Senior Advisor David Foster to guide the new report; Foster was the primary architect of the USEER while at DOE. With such a high quality team, I expected that the new USEER will be an invaluable resource for tracking the evolution of the energy economy in the United States.
Most of the country will have to wait until the next USEER comes out to understand how the clean energy economy has changed since 2016. But thanks to the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, the commonwealth already has updated data. In my next posted, I’ll highlight the findings of the most recent MassCEC Clean Energy Industry Report, released in December 2017.
Most of the country will have to wait until the next USEER comes out to understand how the clean energy economy has changed since 2016. But thanks to the work of the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, the commonwealth tracks its own data. In my accompanying post on Equitable Energy for Massachusetts, I highlight the findings of the most recent MassCEC Clean Energy Industry Report, released in December 2017.
Regardless of the data source, the big trend is clear: the clean energy economy has arrived. Clean energy already provides double the number of jobs (2.6 million) of the fossil fuel industry (1.3 million). But this progress is not enough. To quickly decarbonize the full economy and support the communities most vulnerable to climate impacts, we need to rapid and equitable growth. It is up to all of us to continue advocating for this path.
