Nearly 37,000 Clean Energy Jobs Lost in 2025, E2 Reports

Nearly 37,000 clean energy jobs were lost in 2025, according to a new report from E2, the nonpartisan business group that tracks employment across the U.S. clean energy economy. That figure covers calendar-year 2025 and marks a sharp reversal for a sector that had been one of the economy's more reliable job creators.

The number deserves a moment of translation. Roughly 37,000 positions is the equivalent of an entire mid-sized employer — or several large manufacturing plants — disappearing from payroll in twelve months. For workers in solar manufacturing, wind, storage and related supply chains, the losses are not abstract. They show up as layoffs, frozen requisitions and cancelled projects.

E2 compiles its jobs figures from announcements, company disclosures and public filings. As with any announcement-based count, the final tally can shift as firms post updated severance notices or as some cancelled projects are revived. Readers should treat the figure as a floor, not a ceiling.

What does this change for clean energy workers?

For anyone employed in the sector — or trying to enter it — the practical question is what a contracting job market means for their own position. The short answer: leverage has moved toward employers.

That shift typically shows up in three ways:

• Slower hiring and more applicants per opening in project development and installation roles
• Greater competition for roles that remain, particularly in states with concentrated project pipelines
• Increased value attached to transferable skills — grid, electrical, permitting — that also apply outside clean energy

Workers in manufacturing-heavy segments face the most direct exposure, because plant closures eliminate entire sites at once rather than trimming headcount gradually.

National trend versus sector detail

The national labor market context matters here. A sector-specific loss of this size does not necessarily signal broad weakness, but it does signal that clean energy's decade-long expansion has hit a wall in the near term. E2's reporting frames 2025 as the year the sector's jobs engine stalled.

For job seekers, the calculus changes depending on role. Installers and technicians retain options in adjacent trades. Policy, finance and development professionals may find slower deal flow compressing opportunities. Manufacturing workers tied to specific facilities carry the least mobility.

E2's full dataset, including breakdowns by state and technology, offers the sector-level detail for anyone weighing a move. The 37,000 figure will be revised as more announcements are logged, and the direction of those revisions — up or down — will say much about whether 2026 brings stabilization or continued contraction.

By Priya Raman