Since 2010, the National Solar Jobs Census has been the definitive measure of solar energy industry employment in the United States, charting the growth of the solar workforce alongside the rise of solar energy as a major contributor to the U.S. energy supply and economy as a whole.

The Census is a collaborative effort of the Solar Energy Industries Association, The Solar Foundation, and the Interstate Renewable Energy Council. Primary data collection and analysis is performed by BW Research Partnership, the premier independent energy employment research firm. Unless stated otherwise, all data including in this report is from BW Research Partnership.

This report tracks domestic solar employment across all solar industry market sectors and across the supply chain, from residential solar installation to utility-scale construction, and from raw materials to finished products.

Starting in 2015, the methods and data used to create the Census have been shared with the U.S. Energy and Employment Report (USEER) that tracks employment across all energy technologies.

In this report, a solar worker is defined as anyone who spends 50% or more of their time working on solar related activities. In the past, the USEER has used a broader definition that includes workers spending any amount of time on solar.