A reader writes:
That ThinkProgress (really?) report is just a rehash of US Solar's press releases.
Comparing the steel production sector (actual goods produced) to the number of electricians and plumbers who have been cross-trained to install solar heaters and PV panels has got to be one of the weirder apples-to-oranges economic comparisons ever.
Reading the BLS figures for Building Equipment Contractors (construction and installation), there are about 1.6 million workers already in that sector. About 150K are in HVAC and another 360K are electricians (roofers are oddly underrepresented, so they must fall under a different category). Of those 510,000 workers (plus an unknown number of roofers), even with US Solar's best figures only 90,000 are cross-trained to handle installation of PV panels and solar heating modules.
The BLS gets pretty granular (there are rows for installers of home media entertainment systems), yet there is no breakout whatsoever for installers of solar panels. This may be a lag in creating such a category (although that home media data would seem to indicate they try to stay pretty current), but it seems more likely that these solar jobs are more often adjuncts to an existing business than business lines in and of themselves.
They don't break down furnaces vs. boilers, so solar heat is probably just yet another HVAC job. And yet, HVAC jobs are down, like all other jobs. In two year intervals, HVAC went from 232K in 2004, 250K in 2006, 260K in 2008 and 224K in 2010. Where's the huge growth in solar jobs?
At best, the HVAC jobs are simply swapping technologies (solar heat for gas heat) with no net increase in jobs. PV installation should be counted as "new jobs", but it apparently is just a small adjunct to existing roofing and electrical jobs. None of this makes the comparison any more apt – creators of a one product vs. part-time installers of a different product is a useless statistic. You'd have to compare every industry that "installs" steel – which would be enormously larger than even the most generous reading of solar installation jobs. Call me back when they compare solar manufacturing jobs to steel manufacturing jobs.
The Dish 