Good to know. Helping displaced workers should go along with protecting the environment.

Good to know. Helping displaced workers should go along with protecting the environment.

http://www.treehugger.com/green-jobs/america-now-has-more-solar-energy-workers-coal-miners.html

Michael Graham Richard Business / Green Jobs
April 23, 2013

The Solar Foundation, which has been releasing reports for a few years on the state of the solar industry in the U.S., has just launched a very cool interactive map that breaks the stats down state by state. This allows us to see that there are only 80 solar jobs in Alaska (not too surprising), and over 43,000 in California. Add all 50 states together, and solar employs 119,000 people in the country, a growth of 13.2% in 2012.

Another interesting way to gain perspective is to compare these solar jobs to the number of jobs created by other sectors. Looked at it this way, the Solar Foundation (using stats from the Bureau of Labor Statistics) found that there were more solar energy workers in Texas than ranchers, that solar workers outnumber actors in California, and that across the whole 50 states, there are more solar workers than coal miners.

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Most jobs in solar energy in the U.S. are in installation. It doesn't pay like being a hedge fund manager, but at around $38k/year (around $18/hour), it's above the median national wage of $34,750, and as the industry grows further (it's just getting started), there's the real possibility that shortages of qualified workers will make salaries go up, as they did historically in other fast-growing industries.