Unproductive Solar

Little darling
It's been a long, cold, lonely winter
Little darling
It feels like years since it's been here
--The Beatles

Proponents of solar energy tout the fact that the sector has generated lots of 'good' jobs. In 2016 employment the number of solar energy workers was estimated to be 373,807, compared to 362,118 workers in natural gas and 160,119 in coal.

But just how 'good' are solar jobs? One measure of 'goodness' is productivity, in this case defined as the amount of output (in megawatt hrs of electric power) that a worker produces. In 2016 solar workers generated 36.75 million megawatt hrs of electric power. At the same time, coal workers made 1.24 billion megawatt hrs of electricity while natural gas workers produced 1.38 billion megawatts hrs.

Clearly, both coal and nat gas workers were more productive in 2016, generating output in the billions of megawatt hrs with less workers than the solar sector employed to make output in the millions.

How much more productive were coal and nat gas workers? The productivity comparison in megawatt hrs/worker is:

coal: 7744
nat gas: 3811
solar: 98

In 2016, coal workers were 77 times more productive than solar workers, while nat gas workers were 38 times more productive than their solar counterparts.

On strictly a productivity basis, it is not clear that solar jobs are in fact 'good.' Workers in coal and nat gas appear to be far more productive than solar sector workers.

Solar proponents would surely counter that current productivity comparisons don't tell the whole story. But it is difficult to see how the 'the rest of the story' can adequately bridge the productivity chasm.

Society prospers when people are engaged in high productivity work. Unless the relatively productivity of the solar sector improves significantly (and in a hurry), then economic forces will begin prying scarce resources away from solar toward more productive uses.