The U.S. Department of Energy has released their second annual U.S. Energy and Employment Report and it is outstanding news for solar power advocates.
According to the report, the traditional energy and energy efficiency sector, which now employs 6.4 million Americans, added 300,000 new jobs last year, which is a whopping 14 percent of the nation’s job growth.
Solar specifically employs the largest share of workers in the Electric Power generation sector. The U.S. solar workforce increased by 25 percent in 2016, most due to “the construction related to the significant buildout of new solar generation capacity.” Many of the jobs for the solar industry came from construction and installation projects.
Solar employed 374,807 workers in 2016, where fossil fuels only employed 187,117 works in coal, oil and natural gas technologies.
Another renewable energy source industry, wind generation, has also seen tremendous growth. Wind saw a growth in employment of 32 percent from 2015 to 2016. Currently, there are 102,000 workers in the wind industry.
You can view the entire report here.
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