The Energy Jobs Are There…If You've Got The Technical Background

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

October 1, 2012 | 11:53 AM

If you’ve got the necessary qualifications, the employment possibilities in western Pennsylvania’s energy sector are pretty broad.
But because so many of these jobs require highly-specific skill sets, companies are having a hard time filling them. That’s the conclusion of a new study from two Pittsburgh-area groups, as the Tribune-Review reports:

A recent report conducted the Allegheny Conference on Community Development and the Energy Alliance of Greater Pittsburgh highlighted the fact that energy-industry jobs are abundant in the region and will continue to be through 2020 as people retire, move on to different opportunities and new positions are created to meet demand.
The report noted that a talent shortage in skilled laborers and engineers is likely to continue unless more is done to interest people in these jobs and get them properly trained.
…Representatives of 37 local companies surveyed for the report said they plan to hire about 7,000 people in the next eight years. Roughly 2,000 of those will be new positions. Those officials, however, are highly confident they would be able to fill only one in five of those positions.
Other areas nationwide report similar worker shortages in the energy industry. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the industry has added about 10,000 jobs per month across the country, and shortages are being reported in places such Texas — a longtime industry bellwether.