Energy Workforce Forecasts

Energy Workforce Shortages

2005 – 2007.  Predictions of workforce shortages of 40% of the energy workforce retiring with no new replacement entries foreseen.  “Perhaps the greatest looming shortage is in people.  For two decades, the energy industry tried to cope with poor financial returns through constant downsizing and company-wide layoffs each time oil prices collapsed.  As a result, few new people have entered the energy business in many years.  It was too risky and too many other parts of our economy were far better places to work. When the biggest source of new rig hands started coming from prison parolees, this was a sure sign that the industry’s people equation had reached crisis stage.  There is anecdotal evidence that about 40% of the energy workforce will retire within the next five to seven years with almost no new entries into the energy workforce.” (Matthew R. Simmons, President, Simmons & Company International, Congressional Testimony Before the Senate Budget Committee, Washington, DC, January 30, 2001)

2010-2015.  40% to 60% of the U.S. energy industry workforce projected to retire just as large-scale energy infrastructure and grid expansion is planned.  “[It is] estimated that between 40% and 60% of the U.S. energy workforce will retire over the next five (5) years.  So we’re really hitting kind of a perfect storm, if you will.  That’s something that we’re all very concerned about in the future.”  Energy workforce shortage.  (Kristina Johnson, Under Secretary of Energy, U.S. Department of Energy, “Innovation and the Transformation of the Global Energy System,” video-conferenced from her office in Washington, DC, Google Tech Talk, GooglePlex, Mountain View, California, November 30, 2009)

2015.  Projected loss of 54 percent of U.S. government federal contracting officers eligible for retirement in 2015.  “Crunch time for the federal acquisition workforce hits in 2015.  That's when 54 percent of contracting officers will be eligible to retire, according to a recently released report by the Federal Acquisition Institute. That is a sharp jump from fiscal 2005, when only 13 percent were eligible.  The loss of experienced officers could be severe at the Small Business Administration, where 81 percent of contracting officers will be eligible to retire in 2015, and at the Army, the Navy and the Energy, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services departments, where at least 60 percent will be eligible for retirement. . . .

For federal procurement, however, a wave of retirements could be especially critical. Contracting officers oversee about $350 billion a year in spending, and there are concerns that not enough mid-career professionals will be left to replace retirees because of budget and staff cuts in the 1990s that thinned the ranks.” (Stephen Barr, “Another Warning of a Retiring Workforce,” Washington Post, Monday, August 14, 2006 reporting findings in Federal Acquisition Institute, 703-805-2300, "Annual Report on the Federal Acquisition Workforce," www.fai.gov, U.S. General Services Administration, Fort Belvoir, Virginia, Washington, DC, July 2006) 

Other Workforce Projections

2020.  Public health workforce shortage projected for 2020 in U.S. unless corrective measures taken.  “While natural disasters, the threat of bioterrorism and other health threats are taking their toll on public health resources, the U.S. is facing a major public health workforce crisis that could impact the health of each and every American unless there is an immediate influx of funding for recruitment and training of public health professionals. The Association of Schools of Public Health (ASPH) released a first of its kind assessment [Confronting the Public Health Care Workforce Crisis] of the crisis which found that more than 250,000 additional public health workers are needed by 2020.  …23 percent of the current [public health] workforce -- almost 110,000 workers -- will become eligible to retire during the next presidential term.  ‘Tackling the health implications of tobacco use, heart disease, obesity and physical inactivity, not to mention the threat of globally spreading infectious diseases, depends entirely on the availability of a well-trained public health workforce,’ said Dr. Linda Rosenstock, dean of the UCLA School of Public Health and chair of the ASPH Workforce Taskforce. "Unless we act now to recruit and train an additional 250,000 public health professionals, we will soon be ill-equipped to identify looming public health crises and respond decisively."”  (“More Than 250,000 Additional Public Health Workers Needed by 2020 to Avert Public Health Crisis,” Health & Medicine Week, March 10, 2008)