The total change to clean energy could cause serious turmoil in the US labor sector, and in some places, it could provide a massive number of new high-paying jobs for skilled labor on solar and wind energy farms for example, but in other areas, it could lead to heavy losses in the fossil fuel industry.
Over 1.7 million people are employed by the fossil fuel industry in the US, with MIT recently conducting a study to survey the land and detect the states most populated by fossil fuel workers who would be driven out of their jobs by the new changes in energy paradigms.
It’s almost certain now that many fossil fuel jobs will be lost in the change to clean energy, and some will be rehired quickly, after corporations in the US announced over $110 billion in clean energy investments in the past few years, and already created over 170 thousand jobs related to such fields.
According to an annual report by the Energy Information Administration, over 40% of all local energy jobs created in 2022 were geared towards green energy, with growth in all 50 states.
However some pockets in the US still rely heavily on fossil fuel jobs, and will be hit more than others with the changes.
The MITS survey has compiled a detailed list of such counties and states embroiled deeply in the fossil fuel industry, and called for authorities to utilize such data to mitigate the impact of the energy transformation.
It also won’t be quite easy also to retrain them for clean energy jobs, and it’s possible that the new sector won’t have enough jobs for fossil fuel workers who lost their jobs.
For the time being though, the main issue in the US is actually a potential lack of workers prepared for clean energy positions, and the need for more official and government investment to manage the transfer more fairly and clearly from fossil fuels to renewables.
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