The 2023 U.S. Energy and Employment Report (USEER), a comprehensive study by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), designed to track and understand employment trends across the energy sector, has been released. 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. Clean energy jobs grew 3.9% adding 114,000 jobs nationally, 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.
In pursuit of the president’s goal of 100% clean electricity by 2035 and a net zero economy by 2050, energy jobs are expected to grow across the nation. The growth in clean energy jobs was faster than last year’s robust overall job growth.
USEER is a summary of national and state-level employment, workforce, industry, occupation, unionization, demographic and hiring information in key energy technology groups. It 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.
“The clean energy transition is accelerating, with job growth across every pocket of America,” says 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.”
