The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently released the 2024 U.S. Energy and Employment Report (USEER), a study designed to track and understand employment trends across the energy sector. The 2024 USEER shows that the energy workforce overall added over 250,000 jobs in 2023; 56% (142,000) of those were in clean energy, according to the study.

For the first time, unionization rates in clean energy, at 12.4%, surpassed the average rate in the energy sector of 11%, driven by growth in unionized construction and utility industries, according to the report. The sectors experiencing growth include zero-emission vehicles and renewable energy, as well as transmission, distribution, and storage—sectors crucial to achieving the Biden Administration’s goal to reach 100% clean electricity by 2035.

“Our policies are working. We are now starting to see the job impacts of investments made through the infrastructure and inflation reduction laws – first in construction and, as America builds more of these factories, we’ll see hundreds of thousands more,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm said. “The data clearly show that clean energy means jobs – good jobs, union jobs, and jobs retained – in communities across the country as we race to dominate the global clean energy economy.”

This year’s report reflects a record number of survey responses from 42,000 businesses nationwide.

According to the DOE, key takeaways of the report include:

• In 2023, clean energy was the driving factor for growth in the energy sector. Jobs in clean energy grew by 4.2%, more than twice as much as the already robust job growth rate of 2.0% in the overall economy.
• Jobs in clean energy grew in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Idaho had the fastest rate of clean energy job growth, increasing at 7.7%, followed by Texas at 6.0%, and New Mexico at 5.9%.
• Both the solar and wind sectors reported strong job growth—jumping 5.3% and 4.5% respectively. DOE said it projects that the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will double the share of electricity generation from clean sources by 2030, driven by growth in solar and wind. The energy construction sector added nearly 90,000 energy jobs, growing 4.5%, almost double the economy-wide construction employment growth of 2.3%.
• In addition to jobs in energy infrastructure like renewable energy and grid upgrades, jobs resulting from the construction of domestic clean energy manufacturing and supply chain facilities were tracked for the first time. In addition to the 90,000 traditional energy construction jobs, the report found an additional 28,000 jobs in 2023 carrying out the work of building new battery and solar module factories, ports for offshore wind, and warehouses to store and transport clean energy products.