Traditional Wyoming Energy Jobs Increasing
Despite the Biden Administrations' push for wind and solar energy, traditional energy jobs, coal, gas, and oil, increased in Wyoming.
There has been a bump in the past year of 4,387 jobs or 10.5 percent.
Traditional and reliable Wyoming energy represents 16.5 percent of total state employment.
Records for 2022 show that Wyoming had 45,992 energy workers.
A U.S. Energy and Employment Report for 2023 shows that, of these energy jobs, 1,412 were in electric power generation, 21,887 in various fuels, 12,248 in transmission, distribution, and storage, 6,844 in energy efficiency, and 3,601 in motor vehicles.
Electric power generation made up 79.4% of jobs.
Construction was the second largest sector.
The Report shows the fuels sector, including petroleum and natural gases added 3,855 jobs. That's 21.4% from 2021 to 2022.
Nationally there was a 2.1% increase.
The Report ranks Wyoming as having the highest growth in fuel employment.
This sector of the economy continues to grow, in part, because of the reliability of these forms of energy, and their affordability.
Coal, natural gases, and coal do not need government subsidies to be constructed or to operate.
They are also reliable all year round, no matter what the weather is doing.
States like California that have tried turning to wind and solar as their only form of energy have suffered through long bouts of blackouts and brownouts, at the worst possible times.
In the end, these states have restarted some of their natural gas and nuclear plants to fill the gap left by the unreliability of wind and solar.
As more states, such as Colorado as one example, try to turn to 100% wind and solar states like Wyoming have the opportunity to sell reliable energy to them.