May 28 -- The Office of Energy Jobs, Department of Energy, invites comments by July 29, 2024 regarding the planned continuation of data collection for the annual U.S. Energy & Employment Report Survey.
The rapidly changing nature of energy production, distribution, and consumption throughout the United States economy is having a dramatic impact on job creation and economic competitiveness, but is inadequately understood and, in some sectors, incompletely measured by traditional labor market sources. The U.S. Energy and Employment Report Survey will collect data from businesses in in-scope industries, quantifying and qualifying employment among energy activities, workforce demographics, wages, benefits, workforce needs, and the industry's perception on the difficulty of recruiting qualified workers. The data will be used to generate the annual U.S. Energy and Employment Report.
2023 methodology: The 2023 USEER survey uses a stratified sampling plan that is representative by industry code (NAICS or ANAICS), establishment size and geography to determine the proportion of establishments that work with specific energy-related technologies, as well as the proportion of workers in such establishments that use the same. These data are then analyzed and applied to existing public data published by the BLS, effectively constraining the potential universe of energy establishments and employment. For more detail, see Section III, USEER Sampling Plan.
The 2023 USEER survey was administered by telephone (more than 274,000 outbound calls) and by web, with more than 327,700 emails sent to participants throughout the U.S. The phone survey was conducted by ReconMR. The web instrument was programmed internally, and each respondent was required to use a unique ID to prevent duplication.
The sample was split into two categories, referred to as the known and unknown universes. The known universe includes establishments that have previously been identified as energy related, either in prior research or in some other manner, such as membership in an industry association or participation in government programs. These establishments were surveyed census-style, and their associated establishment and employment totals were removed from the unknown universe for both sampling and for resulting employment calculations and estimates.
The unknown universe included tens of thousands of businesses in potentially energy-related NAICS codes, across agriculture, mining and extraction, utilities, construction, manufacturing, wholesale trade, distribution (including pipeline distribution), professional services, and repair and maintenance. Each of these segments and their total reported establishments (within the BLS QCEW) were carefully analyzed by size (employment) and state to develop representative clusters for sampling. In total, approximately 34,200 business establishments participated in the survey effort, with approximately 7,200 providing full responses to the survey. These responses were used to develop incidence rates among industries (by state) as well as to apportion employment across various industry categories in ways currently not provided by state and federal labor market information agencies. The margin of error for incidence in the USEER is ±0.53% at a 95% confidence interval. The margin of error for all energy firms that answered questions related to energy employment in the survey is ±1.15% at a 95% confidence interval. The margin of error increases for each subgroup of respondents that participated in the survey. For example, the margin of error for questions answered by all firms that identified as solar photovoltaic (PV) is ±3.49% at a 95% confidence interval.
For several industries, particularly transportation of goods, the USEER uses the methodology developed by DOE, BW Research, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and the National Energy Technology Laboratory for the first installment of the USEER. The proportion of employment, referred to as “commodity flows,” was calculated by dividing the value of commodity shipments (in millions of dollars) for coal, fuel oil, gas, motor vehicles, petroleum and other coal and petroleum products by total commodity value at the state level by truck, rail, air and water transport. This proportion was applied to NAICS employment for truck transportation (NAICS 484), water transportation (NAICS 483), air transportation (NAICS 481) and Railroad Retirement Board employment for rail transportation at the state level. With this analysis, truck transportation represents the majority of energy-related transportation employment (69%), followed by rail (22%), water (8%) and air (1%).
Of important note, the USEER expressly excludes any employment in retail trade NAICS codes except for Fuel Dealers (NAICS 454310). This excludes motor vehicle dealerships, gas stations, appliance and hardware stores and other retail establishments.
All data in the USEER rely on the BLS QCEW data for the end of the third quarter of 2022, and the BLS Unemployment Situation Table B-1 monthly reports through December 2022. Employment extrapolations are based off BLS QCEW and survey data, resulting in totals that carry precise decimal values. As a result, some employment totals for tables in the report will sum differently due to rounding. The USEER survey was administered between January 31, 2023, and March 30, 2023, and averaged 17 minutes in length.
USEER:
https://www.energy.gov/policy/us-energy-employment-jobs-report-useer
Draft survey instruments and supporting statement requested from DOE by AEAStat.
FRN:
https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2024-11630