The Recruiter's Outlook (December 2024)

Thank You For Reading!

This newsletter marks the twelfth and final edition of 2024. After fourteen years, EnergeiaWorks subscriber base has grown to 68,000 renewable energy professionals. Thank you for taking the time each month to read our content!?

Today, the first work day of 2025, is a rather quiet day in the office. I have just one scheduled meeting, and the slow holiday trickle of emails hasn’t yet resumed to normal volume. This gives me an opportunity to dig through the archives of media jobs reports and reflect upon the year we just closed. One thing is for sure, I’m looking forward to turning the page on 2024!? The optimism of hiring under the Inflation Reduction Act fell short of the lofty goals and was overshadowed by the Interest Rate and inflation. While not every month was terrible for the overall job economy and renewable energy job creation, there were enough bad months to create a soft year.

A notable trend in my research is the widening gap between solar installed capacity and job creation. We continually see record numbers in solar gigawatts installed but not record numbers in job creation. As quality automation grows, EPCs are able to construct using less manual labor. As AI & ML have become more integrated in enhancing solar farm performance, O&M service providers roll less trucks.? We’ve seen a steady decline in hiring field talent because of these trends. In onshore wind energy, we’ve actually seen the electricity generation decrease for the first time since the mid 1990’s. And the only newsworthy stories in offshore wind in 2024 have been project cancellations because of the interest rate and supply chain costs.

Here’s a snapshot of our 2024 revenue by vertical?

Since I started EnergeiaWorks, I’ve always created long-term and short-term goals for the business by synthesizing the available data in our field. This data analysis has helped me scale the business, but also allows me to forecast trends in talent acquisition for our industry. Last year I predicted a downturn in project development hires as the cost of capital grew and the rise of manufacturing jobs as developers tried to take advantage of domestic incentives baked into the IRA. EnergeiaWorks saw this exact formula unfold in 2024 – project development placements fell from 10% from 2023, and manufacturing placements grew from 9% year over year. In fact, we also noted an increase of 15% in placements within consulting firms, pointing towards the growing competition within engineering and environmental services.

2025 Forecast for Renewable Energy Jobs

If the Trump administration leaves the IRA intact and is able to reverse the Interest Rate, we just might have a US manufacturing boom in renewable energy over the next few years.? 300 production lines could quickly become 3,000.? EnergeiaWorks saw a big increase in local manufacturing hiring over the last two years and I expect that to continue in 2025.? In fact, for the first time in EnergeiaWorks’ history, the majority of our revenue came from manufacturing placements.?

Project development hiring was off the charts in 2021 and 2022 but cooled off in the second half of 2023 and that continued in 2024.? If we can lower the cost of capital in 2025, I think we’ll see an influx of development capital, and hopefully a resurgence of project development hiring.

As I highlighted last month, energy is going to be a major issue for President Trump. He won’t be able to reduce energy costs by 50% as he bragged about, but I trust he can clear some permitting hurdles which would help oil & gas and renewables the same.

If you’d like to read further about global jobs in renewable energy, I recommend IRENA’s employment report. Domestically, IREC covers important ground with their annual Solar Census, and ACP issues more comprehensive reports for onshore and offshore wind jobs in the US. In Canada, keep an eye on reports coming out of CanREA.

Connect with EnergeiaWorks to Plan Your 2025 Hires?

If you're looking to build success in the year ahead by hiring top talent in manufacturing, project development, finance, construction, operations, or energy asset management professionals, reach out to us today to get the conversation started.

William V. Liuzza, CEO, EnergeiaWorks & Founder of Renewables UnWind