Sustainability mandates and demands for more energy efficiency have increased jobs for trained professionals that can drive sustainable actions. A new report, the National Solar Job Census 2022, reports a 3.5% increase in solar jobs in the past two years. According to the U.S. Green Building Council, more solar jobs could be added due to “opportunities created by the Inflation Reduction Act” and its tax incentives for solar.

Released by the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC), the report defines solar workers as “those who spend 50% or more of their time on solar-related work.”

Solar job trend key findings included the following:

• There were 263,883 solar workers in the United States, District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as of December 2022. This represented a year-over-year job gain of 8,846, a 3.5% growth rate. Additional workers spent less than half of their time on solar-related work.

• Nationally, the utility-scale solar market lost about 6,000 jobs in 2022, while residential solar jobs increased by 11%, adding 9,500 jobs.

• States that added the most solar jobs were California (2,404), New York (988), Texas (904), Florida (506) and Massachusetts (476).

• Since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, new domestic facilities have been announced; if built, this could increase solar manufacturing employment in 2023 and beyond.

• The solar industry expects 2023 to be a year of recovery, with anticipated growth in large-scale solar and residential markets.

The USGBC said that 44% of solar energy employers stated their difficulty in finding qualified applicants, which was “a common refrain among employers in green industries,” the organization said.

The Solar Jobs Census is based on survey data gathered by BW Research during spring 2023 for the U.S. Department of Energy’s United States Energy & Employment Report (USEER) 2023.