The country’s energy industry is growing, with significant increases in women working in the field and electric vehicle-related jobs, according to a June 2023 report by the U.S. Department of Energy.
Using data from 2022, the United States Energy and Employment Report 2023 (USEER) found that the industry grew by 3.8%, adding 300,000 jobs last year.
The report states that the industry has recovered 71% of jobs lost in 2020, adding back 596,000 of the 840,000 jobs lost during the first year of the pandemic, though the way these positions are dispersed has shifted. For example, the amount of jobs in battery storage is now 11% higher than in 2019, and there are 92% more positions in advanced and recycled building materials than there were prepandemic.
Overall growth was found in multiple facets.
According to the USEER, every state saw an increase in clean energy jobs, nationally growing by 3.9%. The fastest growing energy technology field was battery EVs, increasing 27% with 28,366 new jobs. This rose almost 17 times faster than the increase in gasoline and diesel vehicle employment.
Offshore wind grew by 20%, coal fuel 22%, natural gas fuel 24%, petroleum 13%, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles 25%, natural gas vehicles 14% and plug-in hybrid vehicles by 10%.
Workforce gender diversity also increased. More than half of the net jobs opened in 2022 were held by women, an increase of 7.8% for the industry. Less than 1% of employees identified as gender nonbinary. Overall, the industry remains male-dominated, with 73% of the energy workforce consisting of men. For context, the U.S. workforce gender average is 53% male.
The report mentioned that union employers were over twice as likely than nonunion employers to require diversity or inclusion training programs and more likely to report their strategies or policies to increase workplace diversity that recruit women, racial minorities or LGBTQ+ hires.
Union employers also reported having less difficulty in recruiting. 48% of nonunion firms found it “very difficult” to find workers, while only 29% of union employers reported the same.
