US clean energy jobs fall by nearly 37,000 in 2025

Clean energy employment in the United States fell by 36,949 jobs in 2025, to 3.52 million positions at the close of the fourth quarter, its first annual decline since the pandemic and only the second since 2015, according to the initial analysis by E2, the business group that published the data on September 22, 2026. The drop amounts to roughly 1% of the sector's workforce.

The figure comes from the US Energy and Employment Report (USEER) of the Department of Energy, which measures positions at the end of 2025. The decline erases close to 40% of 2024 growth, though the sector remains the country's largest energy employer, with 3.52 million positions. Canary Media notes that total energy employment also retreated between 2024 and 2025, so clean energy losses track closely with its weight in the sector as a whole. Installations, by contrast, held at record levels: solar leads new capacity, followed by batteries and wind.

For Mexico, the figure is a reference point for converting installed capacity into payroll. The deployment of solar and storage projects in the country's north, tied to data center demand and the USMCA supply chain, depends on the same type of specialized labor and the same manufacturers operating on both sides of the border. E2 reports losses in 35 states; California accounted for about 21,000, nearly 60% of the national total.

By segment, energy efficiency lost 21,443 positions and clean vehicles 9,619, equivalent to 2.4% of its workforce, the largest relative decline. Storage and grid modernization grew 3.2%, with grid batteries retaining their tax credits. E2 attributes the decline to incentive cuts under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), approved in July 2025, and counts 142 manufacturing, generation and storage projects canceled or downsized.

The next marker is the full Clean Jobs America report, which E2 expects to publish in October 2026 with breakdowns across the 47 subtechnologies, in addition to the employment figures published by the Department of Energy.

This article was drafted with artificial intelligence assistance from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.