Global renewable energy capacity continued to expand at record pace in 2024, yet employment growth lagged far behind, rising just 2.3 percent year on year to 16.6 million jobs, according to the Renewable Energy and Jobs Annual Review 2025 published by the International Renewable Energy Agency and the International Labour Organization.
China remains the central gravity point of this workforce. With an estimated 7.3 million renewable energy jobs in 2024, it accounted for roughly 44 percent of global employment in the sector, reflecting its dominance across manufacturing and deployment. Vertically integrated supply chains and scale-driven cost advantages continue to concentrate value creation inside China, even as other regions accelerate installations. By contrast, employment in the European Union stagnated at around 1.8 million jobs, unchanged from 2023, while growth in India and the United States remained modest at approximately 1.3 million and 1.1 million jobs respectively.
The data point to a decoupling between capacity growth and job creation in mature and highly automated markets. Solar photovoltaics remained the largest employer globally, supporting 7.3 million jobs, but three quarters of those positions were located in Asia. China alone accounted for around 4.2 million solar PV jobs, driven largely by manufacturing rather than installation. As factories become more automated and supply chains consolidate, incremental capacity additions generate fewer jobs per megawatt than in earlier phases of the transition.
Other technologies followed at a distance. Liquid biofuels supported 2.6 million jobs, with nearly half based in Asia, reflecting agricultural feedstock supply chains rather than high-tech manufacturing. Hydropower employed around 2.3 million people, a figure that has remained relatively stable due to the maturity of the sector and limited new large-scale projects. Wind energy supported about 1.9 million jobs globally, with growth constrained by capital intensity and ongoing supply chain bottlenecks.
The report highlights that geopolitical and geoeconomic tensions are now influencing labor outcomes as much as technology costs. Trade disputes, industrial policy realignments, and localization requirements are reshaping where manufacturing investments land, but not necessarily expanding total employment. In some cases, reshoring and diversification efforts raise costs without delivering proportional job gains, particularly as new facilities rely heavily on automation to remain competitive.
IRENA Director-General Francesco La Camera warned that deployment alone will not guarantee broad-based economic benefits. He argued that governments must align trade, industrial, and workforce policies to ensure domestic capacity building and skills development keep pace with investment flows. Without coordinated international action, regions that already lag in the energy transition risk falling further behind, undermining political support for ambitious climate targets, including the global goal of tripling renewable capacity by 2030.
Beyond aggregate job numbers, the report emphasizes persistent structural inequities within the renewable energy workforce. Women and people with disabilities remain significantly underrepresented across most technologies and regions, limiting the sector’s ability to draw on a broader talent pool. The ILO notes that accessibility gaps in education, training systems, and workplace design continue to exclude qualified workers, even as labor shortages emerge in specialized roles.
ILO Director-General Gilbert F. Houngbo stressed that inclusion is not a secondary concern but a prerequisite for resilient labor markets. He argued that accessible training programs, inclusive hiring practices, and adaptive workplaces must be embedded into policy design from the outset, particularly as energy systems become more digital and skills-intensive.
The findings suggest that the next phase of the energy transition will be defined less by headline capacity figures and more by how effectively countries convert investment into durable employment and social value. As automation reduces labor intensity and supply chains concentrate geographically, job creation will increasingly depend on deliberate policy choices rather than market momentum alone.
