Particularly High Shortages in Electrically Skilled Occupations: The Energy Department's 2026 Energy and Employment Report

On September 3, 2026, the U.S. Department of Energy announced in a release that it had released its 2026 U.S. Energy and Employment Report, the USEER. The release says the report "combines a survey of approximately 42,000 establishments with data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other labor-market sources." Parts of the report follow, not the whole. The release's statements on the administration's agenda are not reported here.

Shortages in Electrically Skilled Work

After naming strong demand for workers in electric and natural gas transmission and distribution, storage, and nuclear and coal generation, the report's highlights say that "There are acute labor shortages in these energy sectors, particularly in the Construction, Installation, and Repair occupations, which are driving strong wage increases." And they say that "There are particularly high shortages in electrically skilled occupations due to additional demand from the rapidly expanding data center sector."

In its executive summary, the report says that increased demand and wages for energy workers, together with what employers say about how hard it is to hire, "indicate a worker shortage across the energy economy in 2025," and that USEER data suggests the shortages "were especially acute in Construction, Installation, and Repair occupations within the Electric Power T&D sector." In its chapter on transmission, distribution and storage, the report says that "Utilities employers reported that Line Workers were the most difficult to hire."

Line workers who are hard to hire are a schedule risk before they are a cost. For a data center waiting on its connection, the crew is part of the date.

Competing for the Same Workers

In its Future Outlook chapter, the report says that "Industry sources are finding that energy employers increasingly compete for talent not only with other energy firms, but also with rapidly expanding data center, general infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, and critical minerals industries."

Those sectors "draw from many of the same occupational pipelines," the report says, naming in particular electricians, electrically skilled engineers and technicians, industrial maintenance workers, building trades workers and skilled production workers. "While interest and enrollment in apprenticeship programs have increased," it goes on, "worker shortages still limit hiring in high-growth energy sectors such as Natural Gas T&D, Electric Power T&D, Battery Storage, and various EPG subsectors, particularly in the Construction, Installation, and Repair Occupations."

Employment Outlook Across Emerging Sectors

The data center sector, the report says, is "not yet captured in the USEER," and it says that sector and the Critical Minerals and Materials sector have "a strong employment outlook, helped by policy actions prioritizing these sectors." The chapter says that "Data centers can also create significant benefits from agglomeration." They "can draw in both highly skilled workers and associated specialized firms," it says.