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March 5, 2026
Climate jobs—spanning energy efficiency, clean energy generation, electricity transmission and distribution, energy storage, clean transportation, public transportation, and other sectors—have been steadily on the rise in the United States. The energy sector as a whole has experienced continuous growth in recent years, but in 2024 saw its slowest growth rate since 2020. With a 2.8% growth rate, clean energy job creation exceeded fossil fuel job creation in 2024, and outpaced overall U.S. job growth more than threefold. In total, there were more than 4,085,300 climate jobs in 2024.*
Energy efficiency supported almost 2.4 million jobs in 2024. This includes the work of designing, manufacturing, distributing, and installing energy-efficient products and services. Every job category within this sector has experienced growth since 2021. The states with the most energy efficiency jobs in 2024 were California (312,090 jobs), Texas (182,506), New York (135,393), and Florida (132,060). While energy efficiency jobs were up in every state in 2024, the states that experienced the most growth were New Mexico (+7.7%), Idaho (+7.3%), Nevada (+7.3%), and Oklahoma (+7.2%).
Renewable energy supported 596,100 jobs in 2024. Solar (370,600 jobs) and wind (133,000) accounted for more than 84% of all renewable energy jobs. Wind turbine service technicians and solar photovoltaic installers are the two fastest-growing occupations in the United States for the third year running. California had the highest number of solar, wind, and traditional hydropower jobs (135,397), followed by Texas (48,934) and New York (25,957).
In 2024, employment in clean energy storage as well as grid technology and modernization supported 160,300 jobs. Clean energy storage and grid jobs grew by 4.3% in 2024. Texas saw the highest employment (60,641 jobs), followed by California (53,520) and Illinois (19,411). The highest growth rate occurred in pumped hydro storage (+7.6%), while battery storage gained the most new jobs (+3,100). Transmission and distribution are critical to delivering consumers reliable electric service; however, data on employment in the transmission and distribution of clean energy cannot be disaggregated from the same work for fossil fuels, so a count is not included.
Clean vehicles supported 398,100 jobs in 2024. This includes 161,200 jobs in hybrid electric vehicles, 148,300 in battery electric vehicles, 70,300 in plug-in hybrid vehicles, and 18,300 in hydrogen/fuel cell vehicles. While employment in the clean vehicle sector has increased overall since 2022, it fell by 3% from 2023 to 2024. Hybrid electric vehicle employment saw the greatest losses, shedding nearly 6,000 jobs in 2024.
Renewable fuels supported 111,800 jobs in 2024, remaining steady from 2023. This includes about 36,100 jobs in corn ethanol, 21,700 in other ethanol fuels, 33,800 in woody biomass, and 20,200 in other biofuels. Only woody biomass experienced job losses in 2024, falling by more than 2%.
Public transportation supported 437,313 jobs in 2023, the last available reporting year. This figure comprises jobs in demand response, bus transit, freight and surface rail, and other modes of public transportation. Bus transit alone accounted for 50% of these jobs. Every $1 billion invested in public transportation can yield 50,000 jobs.
As climate change impacts grow more frequent and severe, employment related to adaptation and resilience is also expanding across many sectors, including natural resource management, transportation, infrastructure, public health, tourism, and disaster risk management. The adaptation and resilience industry increased by 18% to $4.8 billion in 2024, compared to overall climate industry growth of 9% to $532 billion. The growth comes primarily from work happening in climate risk analysis, resilience planning, design engineering, and construction management. Alongside ongoing job creation, existing jobs not traditionally considered to be climate jobs are increasingly incorporating adaptation and resilience components as climate change intensifies.
As of 2025, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has no category for adaptation and resilience-related jobs, in part because of their cross-cutting nature. Accordingly, while there is information on industry growth from private sources, individual adaptation and resilience jobs are not comprehensively tracked. Revisions to the Standard Occupational Classification system during its 2028 update would be the primary avenue to strengthen analysis of adaptation and resilience employment going forward.
Between 2021 and 2024, the passage and implementation of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (P.L. 117-58), the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) (P.L. 117-169), and the CHIPS and Science Act (P.L. 117-167) fostered investment and job creation in the fields of energy efficiency, renewable energy, and climate resilience. Investments from the IRA alone were projected to create more than 303,500 jobs each year for new energy project construction, and about 100,000 permanent jobs each year after construction. In 2025, Congress and the Trump Administration weakened or eliminated many IRA tax incentives and other funding that catalyzed climate job creation and growth. Nonetheless, with continued work at the state level and potential federal interest in areas including geothermal energy, remediating abandoned oil and gas wells, and decarbonizing heavy industry, climate-related jobs will remain an important fixture of the U.S. economy.
* Jobs data for 2025 is expected later in 2026
Author: Nicole Pouy
Editors: Daniel Bresette, Amaury Laporte
For the endnotes, please download the PDF version of this fact sheet.
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