Solar and Wind Add 14,800 Jobs. Electricians Add 75,900
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Read Our Editorial StandardsThe Bureau of Labor Statistics now names artificial intelligence power demand as a driver of the fastest-growing industry sector in the American economy. The two occupations that story is always told through — solar installers and wind turbine technicians — are projected to add 14,800 jobs between them by 2035. Electricians alone are projected to add 75,900.
Both numbers come from the same release. One of them is the headline and the other is the job market.
Where the work actually lands
Solar photovoltaic installation is projected to grow 36.5 percent and wind turbine servicing 29.5 percent, the fifth and second fastest rates of any detailed occupation. They are also two of the smallest occupations in the country: 31,100 and 11,800 posts respectively. A third of a very small number is still a small number.
Electricians grow 9.2 percent, which sounds unremarkable, from a base of 821,000. That is 75,900 additional posts and 72,700 openings a year. Heating, air conditioning and refrigeration technicians grow 10.9 percent, adding 48,200 posts with 40,600 openings a year. Between them those two trades account for more than eight times the job growth of solar and wind combined, and both are entered without a degree.
What the bureau actually said
The 2025–35 projections put utilities as the fastest-growing major industry sector at 9.8 percent, and are explicit about why: “Nearly all the job growth is expected from electric power generation, transmission, and distribution due to increasing demand for electricity, including artificial intelligence (AI) power demands.”
The bureau is equally explicit about the scale. That 9.8 percent amounts to 58,800 new jobs, “because of the sector’s relatively small employment size”. Solar, wind and geothermal generation are named as the fastest-growing detailed industries, and combined with the rest of electric power generation are projected to add only about 35,800 jobs across the decade.
The largest employment effect of the electricity build-out is not in generating power, but in the trades that wire, cool and maintain the buildings that consume it.
The one industry where the AI story does translate into large numbers is elsewhere entirely: computing infrastructure providers, data processing and web hosting, projected to grow 25.1 percent and add 120,400 jobs. That is the data centre itself rather than the grid feeding it, and we set out where those roles sit in the piece on which technology occupations are actually growing.
The number that should stop you
Power plant operators are projected to decline 5.1 percent, from 29,800 posts to 28,300, at a median wage of $102,040.
Electricity demand rising and the people who operate generating plants declining is not a contradiction; it is what automation of a control-room function looks like, and it is a useful corrective to the assumption that demand for an output means demand for the labour historically attached to it. Anyone planning a career on “the grid is growing” should sit with that figure for a moment.
The engineering layer
| Occupation | Median wage | Change to 2035 | Openings a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electrical engineers (17-2071) | $120,630 | +9.9% | 11,400 |
| Mechanical engineers (17-2141) | $104,110 | +11.2% | 17,800 |
| Civil engineers (17-2051) | $100,840 | +6.4% | 22,700 |
| Architects (17-1011) | $99,280 | +4.3% | 6,900 |
Mechanical engineering is the strongest grower of the four, which tracks the cooling and mechanical plant that data centres require as much as it tracks generation. The power systems engineer post at Bloom Energy at $130,000 to $175,000 sits above the electrical engineering median, as a specialist role in a growth segment should. The mechanical designer post at Stantec at $75,000 to $95,000 sits below the mechanical engineering median, which is the ordinary difference between designing and engineering.
The water resources engineer post at HDR at $78,000 to $108,000 straddles the civil engineering median, and water is the other input the data centre conversation tends to forget.
The trades are where the volume is
If the question is where a person without a degree should aim, the answer in this build-out is unambiguous. Electricians and HVAC technicians offer 113,300 openings a year between them, at medians of $63,190 and $61,010, with entry requirements of a high school diploma and a postsecondary certificate respectively.
Those medians look modest against the engineering figures above, and the licensed-trade structure is the reason to read them carefully rather than dismiss them: as we set out for plumbing licence tiers, the median describes an occupation containing apprentices, journeymen and masters at once. The apprentice electrician post at Miller Electric at $15 to $16 an hour and the refrigeration engineer post at CoolSys at $28 to $40 an hour are two points on the same ladder, and the arithmetic of that progression is what makes the entry rate tolerable.
Before you plan around the build-out
- Separate percentage growth from job growth. The fastest-growing occupation in a sector is frequently one of its smallest, and a 36.5 percent rise on 31,100 posts is not a labour market.
- Ask where in the chain a role sits. Generation, transmission, data centre construction and building services are four different markets with four different outlooks.
- Do not assume demand for the output means demand for the labour. Power plant operators decline 5.1 percent while electricity demand rises.
- For the trades, look at openings rather than growth. Electricians offer 72,700 a year; solar installation offers 4,200.
- Check whether a green-energy employer holds a registered apprenticeship, because in several states that shortens the route to a higher licence tier.
The electricity build-out is real, it is federally documented, and BLS is unusually direct about AI being one of its causes. What the data does not support is the picture that comes with it — of a labour market reorganised around panel installation and turbine maintenance. The jobs are in wiring, cooling, designing and inspecting the buildings on the other end of the wire, and most of them do not require a degree.
Employment projections, job-change figures, median annual wages, annual openings and typical entry-level education are Bureau of Labor Statistics figures from the 2025–35 projections released on 27 August 2026. Quoted explanations of industry growth are from the accompanying news release. Job-change figures are rounded to the nearest hundred by the bureau.
