The rapid expansion of solar energy over the past few years has created hundreds of thousands of well-paying American jobs. The most recent National Solar Jobs Census published by The Solar Foundation, a nonprofit organization I lead, found there were 260,077 solar workers in the United States as of 2016. That year, one in 50 new U.S. jobs were in solar, and the industry added jobs 17 times faster than the overall economy.
As the industry wait for a decision on solar panel tariffs, some critics questioned the accuracy of this jobs data. The Coalition for a Prosperous America recently claimed the total number of solar jobs is around 30,000 (which, if true, would make our data inflated by a factor of nine).
The Solar Foundation is not a lobbying organization and we have no advocacy role in the pending trade case. However, we are committed to publishing accurate and objective data on the U.S. solar workforce, information that is vital for decision makers in the government and industry
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