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USA: Number of solar energy jobs equals number of coal industry jobs

There are about as many solar jobs as coal jobs in the US, Vox  January 18, 2015 Rooftop solar power is fairly labor-intensive. You need people to design and manufacture panels. Then people to market the panels to households. Then people to come and install them on rooftops…..the solar industry employed roughly 174,000 people in 2014, according to a survey from the non-profit Solar Foundation. And the industry is expected to add another 36,000 jobs this year, as rooftop installations keep rising at a rapid clip.

To put this in perspective, 174,000 is pretty comparable to the number of workers employed by the US coal industry, if you add up everyone employed in coal mining (about 80,000), plus coal transportation and coal power plants.

January 19, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | renewable, USA