New Report: Wages, Benefits, and Change
A Supplement to the Annual U.S. Energy and Employment Report
The Wage Report adds new data and analysis to the portfolio of annual U.S. Energy & Employment Reports (USEERs) and the 5-Year Energy & Employment Report (5-Year Report). This supplemental report focuses on wages and benefits for U.S. energy jobs.
Webinar & Key Findings
At the end of 2019, the five major energy technology sectors – Electric Power Generation; Fuels; Transmission, Distribution, and Storage; Energy Efficiency; and Motor Vehicles - employed more than 8.27 million workers, accounting for 5.4 percent of all jobs in the United States.
Between 2015 and 2019, these sectors created about 915,000 new jobs, almost 11 percent of all employment growth in the nation. During this period, energy jobs in the U.S. grew at almost twice the rate of the overall economy.
The median hourly wage for all energy workers in the U.S. is $25.60 – 34 percent higher than the national median hourly wage of $19.14. In general, energy sector employees across all energy technology sectors and nearly all energy industry segments earn higher hourly wages compared to the national median and other sectors of the economy.
Wages for all energy industry crosscuts are higher than national wages, ranging from a premium of 27 percent to 105 percent above national median wages.
Few energy jobs pay below the national median; these jobs earn less because they fall within broader industry or occupational groups that also earn below the national median.
While the energy sector was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the energy industry lost fewer jobs compared to other sectors of the economy, such as Tourism, Hospitality, and Recreation, Information and Communications, Retail, and Building and Design.
Over the last two decades, U.S. energy production has trended away from coal and towards natural gas, petroleum, and renewables. Employment changes for this period mirror this trend: coal fuels sector employment declined by 18 percent; petroleum and natural gas fuels employment grew by almost 9 percent; solar and wind power generation employment grew by 22 percent.
Shifts in dominant fuel sources and energy technologies are creating new geographic concentrations of energy jobs across the nation, particularly in the electric power generation and fuels technology sectors.
Energy efficiency jobs are unique in that they are ubiquitous across the U.S. – in every one of the 3,000+ counties except for six.
Energy workers in the examined occupations are more likely to receive healthcare and retirement benefits compared to national private-sector averages.