We Talk About Workforce. We Should Talk More About Work.
We spend a great deal of time in workforce development getting people ready for jobs. The work is organized around demand: which occupations are growing, which employers are hiring, what skills and credentials are required, and how many people we can prepare and connect to opportunity. All of that is necessary. But placement has a way of becoming the finish line in our reporting even when, for the person taking the job, it is only the beginning.
Once someone is hired, the workforce conversation can become much quieter. The person who was a participant becomes an employee, and much of what happens next moves outside the boundaries of the program. Yet that is where the opportunity becomes real. The wage becomes a household budget. The schedule has to coexist with childcare, transportation, school, or other responsibilities. Benefits, stability, supervision, workplace culture, and the possibility of advancement begin to matter in ways they never could on a placement report.
That deserves particular attention in clean energy because the employment opportunity is substantial. The 2026 U.S. Energy & Employment Report estimates that the American energy economy employed 8.4 million people in 2025, with a median annual wage of $63,000 compared with $51,000 across the U.S. workforce. Within energy efficiency, however, reported median wages vary considerably: about $49,000 for construction laborers, $67,000 for electricians, and more than $100,000 for several professional and management occupations. A growing industry can create significant opportunity without every job inside that industry providing the same level of economic security or the same long-term prospects.1
That is why I think those of us who work in this space should be more precise when we use the phrase family-sustaining job. I use it too. It expresses something important about what we want workforce development to make possible, but it can sound more specific than it actually is. Housing, transportation, childcare, health care, taxes, and other basic expenses vary by location and household. The 2026 Living Wage Benchmark Series reflects that reality by estimating living wages across 3,144 U.S. counties and county equivalents and 12 family configurations. A wage that creates stability for one household may not do the same for another. The phrase remains useful, but it should push us to look behind the salary rather than allowing a single number to settle the question.2
Pay matters enormously, but the experience of work is broader than pay. The federal Good Jobs Principles include a stable and predictable living wage, adequate hours and predictable schedules, safe working conditions, benefits, opportunities to build skills and advance, job security, and a workplace culture in which people are respected and have a voice. Two jobs with the same hourly wage can affect a person’s life very differently. A predictable schedule can determine whether a parent can maintain childcare. Benefits can change the real value of compensation. A clear route to greater responsibility can turn an entry-level position into the beginning of a career.3
Workforce practitioners do not control all of those conditions, and I do not think we should pretend that we do. Employers have businesses to operate, and compensation, benefits, scheduling, supervision, and advancement are organizational decisions. Smaller businesses and contractors may also be operating within margins that make some changes difficult. Workforce development cannot solve every challenge inside a workplace. But we do have influence over what we normalize.
That influence begins before a participant accepts a job. When we develop employer relationships, there is value in knowing more than how many openings a company has and what credentials it requires. We should understand the hours, whether the work is seasonal, when benefits begin, how wages progress with experience, and where people in the position have moved after a year or two. Those are not questions designed to grade an employer. They help us understand the opportunity well enough to represent it honestly to someone who may be making an important decision about their future.
The same understanding can make us better partners to employers. A company may be struggling to recruit when the larger issue is retention. Another may offer competitive wages but lose new employees because onboarding or supervision needs attention. An employer may say it cannot find qualified people while requiring experience that makes an entry-level position nearly impossible to enter. Another training cohort may sometimes be part of the answer, but it may not be the entire answer. There are moments when the workforce challenge is not simply a shortage of workers; something about the work itself deserves attention.
Practitioners are often positioned between people looking for opportunity and employers looking for talent, which gives us a view of the labor market that neither side always sees clearly on its own. Participants tell us what makes an opportunity difficult to pursue or sustain. Employers tell us where new hires are struggling. Training providers see where skill requirements are changing, and community organizations understand barriers that may never appear in an employer survey. Used well, that perspective can help us do more than move people toward vacancies. It can help employers and workers understand one another better.
There is also a distinction worth making between a strong first job and a family-sustaining career. Not every person will enter an industry at the wage or level of responsibility they ultimately hope to reach. Careers develop. People gain experience, acquire additional skills, earn credentials, take on more responsibility, and sometimes move between employers as their capabilities grow. Starting point matters, but so does trajectory. A lower starting wage looks different when the experience, training, and milestones leading to higher earnings are visible and attainable. The Good Jobs Principles recognize that connection by treating skills development and transparent advancement opportunities as part of job quality rather than something separate from it.3
For workforce practitioners, that means placement should remain important without becoming the end of our interest. Someone securing employment after training is a meaningful outcome and should be celebrated. The longer view asks what happened next: whether the person stayed, whether earnings grew with skills and experience, whether the job opened the door to greater responsibility, or whether a first position helped someone move into a better opportunity elsewhere. Those answers tell us something the initial placement number cannot.
They also tell us something about the quality of the partnerships we are building. If graduates repeatedly leave the same position after a few months, that is useful information. If people thrive with one contractor and struggle with another despite entering with similar preparation, that is worth understanding. If a particular credential or type of experience consistently helps workers advance, future training should reflect it. Following the employment outcome further gives us a clearer picture of whether we are simply helping people get hired or helping them establish themselves in an industry.
Clean energy gives us an opportunity to think about these questions while significant parts of the labor market are still evolving. New technologies are changing existing occupations. Contractors are expanding into new lines of business. Utilities and their partners are developing programs that require new combinations of technical, operational, and customer-facing skills. Workers already in the industry are learning alongside people entering it for the first time. Job quality does not have to be something we discover after the jobs have been created; it can be part of the conversation about what a strong clean-energy economy looks like while that economy is still taking shape.
There is no perfect job, just as there is no workforce program that can guarantee what a person’s career will become. People value different things at different stages of their lives, and businesses operate under different circumstances. Our role is not to decide which opportunities people are allowed to take. People are capable of making those decisions for themselves. Our responsibility is to understand the opportunities we are presenting well enough to be truthful about them, to build employer relationships that extend beyond filling openings, and to remain interested in whether the work is creating the kind of economic mobility we say workforce development is intended to support.
A job offer is an important moment. It is not the whole story.
If we are asking people to invest their time, effort, and trust preparing for a changing economy, our standard cannot stop at whether a job exists. We should care whether the work gives people a fair chance to build stability, grow their capabilities, and see a future for themselves in the industry. That is a higher bar than placement, but it is closer to the reason this work matters.
Market Signals & References
- U.S. Department of Energy. 2026 United States Energy & Employment Report. 2026.
Source: https://www.energy.gov/documents/2026-useer-national-report
- Living Wage Institute. 2026 Living Wage Benchmark Series: Technical Documentation. 2026.
Source: https://livingwage.mit.edu/resources/living_wage_technical_documentation.pdf
- U.S. Departments of Labor and Commerce. Good Jobs Principles. 2022; see also Implementing the Good Jobs Principles.
