Wind Turbines, Columbia River Gorge. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
At the AFL-CIO convention in early June, union leaders spoke of how the Biden administration’s 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA, also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law) and its 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) contributed to the creation of good union jobs in clean energy production. As discussed in CEPR’s Majority Agenda, US infrastructure is in a poor state. Our energy infrastructure receives only a D+ grade. The Biden administration directed$1 trillion to clean energy, and those investments have produced positive results for workers, US energy production, and the climate.
“Energy jobs grew every year of the Biden administration” and “[c]lean energy investments powered job growth in the sector,” the Roosevelt Institute reports. The Institute adds,
The lion’s share of energy job growth (72 percent) after the passage of IIJA and IRA was in clean energy, representing over 450,000 net new jobs in clean energy. Jobs in clean energy now represent nearly 44 percent of all US energy jobs.
Roosevelt also pointed specifically to strong growth in construction and manufacturing jobs related to clean energy.
The Biden legislation encouraged the linking of project funding to labor and community benefits agreements. This policy appears to have worked to support the growth of union jobs in the energy sector. Figure 1 shows that while the overall private-sector unionization rate declined over the Biden administration, the unionization rate increased in the energy sector.
Figure 1
Much of the world is moving toward a clean energy future, but the Trump administration wants to take the United States back to the dirty energy past. One such step was the administration’s cancelling of wind energy projects. John L. Downey, the president of the International Union of Operating Engineers, who celebrated the growth of energy jobs at the AFL-CIO convention, issued a statement on December 23, 2025 in response to Trump’s actions:
The International Union of Operating Engineers denounces the Trump Administration’s decision to issue stop work orders on five large scale energy projects and immediately laying off thousands of American workers right before Christmas.
As working families struggle with a nationwide affordability crisis, the Administration’s decision adds insult to injury to thousands of construction workers who will be getting pink slips instead of holiday bonuses this week. This shortsighted decision, cloaked under a “national security” label, to halt construction on previously vetted and approved projects will only increase energy prices for ratepayers and hand America’s energy future to foreign competitors.
American workers are employed in this industry. Taking more wind power off the board creates uncertainty in the renewable construction business, and uncertainty creates job loss. We need to stay at the forefront of energy dominance, not scaling back the American workforce AND America’s power generation capacity.
He condemned the making of the members of his union “collateral damage in a political vendetta against one particular industry.”
While the Trump administration continues to waste taxpayer dollars by paying companies not to build wind projects, after a legal battle, there are signs that wind energy production developed by state governments might resume in the United States. As the Trump administration’s anti-clean-energy — and anti-good-jobs — stance continues, one hopes that unions and others will keep fighting for a clean energy future.
This first appeared on CEPR.
