After the much-publicized recent media discussion of the Clean Jobs Midwest report, E2 have just published the Clean Jobs California report. While clean energy employment has been impacted by Covid, there is still much to be optimistic about regarding your possible midlife transition to the clean energy sector. Here’s the report summary:
Driven by the unforeseeable impact of last year’s pandemic and resulting economic crisis, California experienced its first decline in clean energy jobs in 2020 since E2 began tracking such occupations. California’s clean energy economy employed about 480,000 Californians at the end of 2020, down from 537,000 the year before.
However, since the sector’s losses peaked at the end of May 2020, jobs grew back by more than 13 percent compared to less than 6 percent in statewide economy overall. In fact, by the end of 2020 more than half of the clean energy jobs lost between March and May had been regained, leaving the sector down just 9 percent (about 52,000 jobs) since COVID-19. Thanks to decades of smart state climate policy leadership, California’s clean energy economy has proven to not only be a core part of the state’s economy – representing 3 percent of overall state employment – but resilient and robust in the face of crushing economy-wide pressures.
- Despite the overall decline, clean energy remains the biggest job creator across America’s energy sector:
- Clean energy employs nearly six times as many workers as work in fossil fuel extraction and generation
- More Californians still work in clean energy than work as registered nurses, accountants, lawyers, software designers, or truck drivers.
- Median hourly wages for clean energy jobs also are about 29 percent higher than the statewide median wage.
- Over half of the state’s clean energy jobs – 244,790 – were in construction with the clean energy economy employing 28 percent of the state’s entire construction workforce. Read the full report on E2.