March 17, 2016 | By RGR Marketing Blog

What the Solar Foundation’s Solar Job Census Can Tell Us about Solar in America

Every year the Solar Foundation does employment research across the industry and prepares an annual report. This census of jobs in the U.S. Solar Industry is conducted in an effort to understand the impact of developments in the U.S. to the solar industry and its continued, ongoing growth.

Because the solar industry is growing and changing so rapidly and the policies that affect the solar industry are in a state of constant flux, the census can offer a snapshot of how the industry is performing for a specific year that can then serve in comparison to other years both past and future.

The Solar Foundation’s Solar National Jobs Census 2015 was conducted alongside research on solar jobs and the solar industry in fourteen individual states. Together, these reports can deliver detailed data on the growth or decline of various aspects of the solar manufacturing and installation industry on a state to state and national level.

The national report, the sixth one to be conducted on an annual basis, also includes regional data on the solar industry across nine U.S. regions, measuring trends, current solar industry employment, and projected growth as well.

The Growing Trend Continues

This year’s report indicates that not only has the solar industry continued to grow and outpace the overall growth of the U.S. economy, the solar industry is also growing faster than predicted by previous years' censuses. The solar industry as a whole accounted for 1.2% or all new jobs in the U.S. and added jobs at a rate twelve times greater than the entire U.S. economy in 2015.

Job growth in the solar industry is at just over twenty percent for the year. Furthermore, in the six years that the Solar Foundation has been conducting the census employment in the solar industry has more than double by adding over one-hundred thousand jobs.

Drilling Into the Data

The solar industry as a whole has just shy of one-hundred twenty-thousand workers as of 2015. The majority of the industry is still concentrated in installation and the installation sector added jobs faster than the industry as a whole with twenty-four percent growth in 2015.

The solar industry also added women workers at a rate faster than its overall growth, twenty-four percent, adding two percent more woman to the industry. The census showed that the solar industry enjoys greater diversity than other segments of energy as a whole, but that there is still much work to do to get the industry to represent the diversity of the United States.

A Bright Future

Aggregating survey responses from employers throughout the U.S., the census reports that the industry expects to grow by just under fifteen percent over the year to come.

While this represents slower growth than enjoyed in 2015, it still represents growth outpacing the energy sector and the U.S. economy as a whole.

[Photo via: TheSolarFoundation]

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