#106 – Inside Our Industry – US Electric Vehicle Jobs Exploded in 2021
Posted on | Inside Our Industry
Many of us have very mixed feelings when it comes to electric vehicles, from range anxiety to sheer cost of the vehicles. But we can probably all agree that electric vehicles are here to stay. The following report from electrek.co outlines how manufacturing jobs are increasingly geared toward electric vehicle production.
US electric vehicle jobs exploded in 2021
Michelle Lewis, – Jun. 28, 2022
The US Department of Energy (DOE) today released the 2022 US Energy and Employment Report (USEER), which reveals that 2021 saw electric vehicle jobs increase by a whopping 26.2%, or 21,961, new jobs.
The 2022 USEER report shows that the energy sector – with the exception of fossil fuels – experienced positive job growth. Overall, the sector rose by 4% from 2020 to 2021, outpacing overall US employment, which grew 2.8% in the same period. The energy sector added more than 300,000 jobs, increasing the total number of energy jobs from 7.5 million in 2020 to more than 7.8 million in 2021.
In addition to the huge job growth in the full battery electric vehicle sector mentioned above, other vehicle sectors saw notable job growth as well:
- Hybrid electric vehicle jobs increased 19.7%, adding 23,577 new jobs.
- Plug-in hybrid vehicle jobs increased 30.9%, adding 14,790 jobs.
- Hydrogen fuel cell jobs increased 41.4%, adding 4,160 jobs.
Fossil fuel jobs accounted for most of the fuel jobs lost:
- Petroleum – both onshore and offshore – led losses with a decrease of 6.4%, shedding 31,593 jobs.
- Coal fuel jobs declined by the greatest percentage, at 11.8%, losing 7,125 jobs.
- Fuel extraction jobs overall decreased by 12%.
But, biofuels, including renewable diesel fuels, biodiesel fuels, and waste fuels, grew by 6.7%, adding 1,180 jobs.
When it came to electric power generation, renewables grew, and fossil fuel energy for electric power generation jobs either declined or grew at a slower pace than renewable energy jobs:
- Coal power generation jobs decreased by 572 from 2020 to 2021, down 0.8%.
- Natural gas and petroleum grew at slower rates (1.6% and 0.5%, respectively) than overall U.S. employment (2.8%).
- Nuclear dropped 4.2%, losing 2,440 jobs.
- Batteries jumped 4.4% with 2,949 jobs.
- Smart grids increased 4.9% to 1,136 jobs.
- Solar energy jobs increased by 5.4%, adding 17,212 new jobs.
- Wind energy jobs increased by 2.9%, adding 3,347 new jobs.
- Energy efficiency jobs increased by 2.7%, adding 57,741 new jobs.