On June 28, 2022, the U.S. Department of Energy released the United States Energy and Employment Report 2022, reporting that energy jobs grew faster than overall U.S. employment in 2021. The report was originally launched in 2016 and was designed to track employment trends across the energy sector and within five energy sectors: electric power generation; fuels; transmission, distribution, and storage; energy efficiency; and motor vehicles. The Energy Futures Initiative (EFI) and the National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO) continued the report as a joint initiative in 2018, and the report has since returned to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
The U.S. Energy & Employment Report (USEER) was first published under the direction of then-Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz (now EFI CEO), and under recommendation of the first DOE Quadrennial Energy Review. The Obama Administration issued the USEER again in 2017, but the Trump Administration did not produce an update in 2018. To continue monitoring annual trends and prevent loss of data, EFI and NASEO began co-producing the report in 2018, publishing the results at www.usenergyjobs.org. Each EFI/NASEO edition of the annual report, along with an exclusive 5-year summary of trends and associated materials, is also housed on the EFI website. In total, the team produced ten reports before DOE resumed the project in 2021.
In 2021, the USEER was also produced as a joint effort by the EFI, NASEO, and BW Research, but was shifted back to DOE for publication. At the report launch, U.S. Secretary Jennifer Granholm recognized the team’s effort to keep the report going. She said, “Know that it is because of you that we know just how much the energy sector, especially clean energy, has grown in recent years.” She pledged that the Biden Administration’s Department of Energy would continue the USEER and track the impending investments to come in the energy sector.
True to its commitment, DOE fully produced and published the report in 2022, reporting that energy jobs had rebounded in 2021. EFI/NASEO reported that about 840,000 energy jobs had been lost in 2020. In 2021, energy jobs shot up 4.0%, ahead of overall U.S. employment, which grew 2.8% within the same time period. This most recent study also found overall job growth in the energy sector, from 7.5 million jobs in 2020 to more than 7.8 million jobs in 2021.
— Sonia Velazquez
(Share this post with others.)
