This article was published by The Energy Mix on Dec. 9, 2025.
Fossil fuel employment has fallen to less than 1 per cent of the Canadian work force, while growth in global energy jobs outpaced the wider economy for the third year in a row, according to two reports released over the last several days.
In Canada, the fossil industry has dropped 38,000 jobs in the last five years, mostly in upstream oil and gas, even though production increased 35 per cent for oil and 24 per cent for natural gas over that period, the Centre for Future Work reported Monday.
“This long-term decline is set to continue for many reasons, not solely or mostly climate policy. New technologies, economic forces, resource depletion, and corporate outsourcing strategies are all eliminating fossil fuel jobs,” the Vancouver-based organization said in a release. The 95-page report concludes [pdf] that:
• The job transition out of fossil fuels is taking place in spite of any efforts in national climate policy, not because of them.
• The pace of the decline is consistent with a full phaseout of fossil fuels by 2050.
• Most of today’s fossil fuel workers will have reached normal retirement age by then.
• Interviews with workers showed that most of them expect to see the industry decline, but are reasonably confident the transition can be managed without mass displacement.
• Federal “just transition” efforts to date have been “long on aspiration and consultation, and short on implementation and effective guarantees.”
• Transition planning in Canada “is made even more nebulous by the fact that no general transition away from fossil fuel production and use is in fact occurring,” except for the 2030 federal mandate to phase out coal.
The research “confirms that an employment transition away from fossil fuel jobs is occurring, and occurring quickly,” said report co-author and centre director Jim Stanford. “Regardless of the twists and turns of climate policy debates, that decline will continue, driven by deeper economic and technological factors.”
But when it comes to just transition planning, “most policies emphasize consultation and dialogue, not binding agreements and entitlements,” the report states. “Instead of clear guarantees of employment and income for affected workers, workers are typically offered retraining subsidies and career counselling. In a labour market defined by chronic insecurity and fierce competition for decent work, this does not convince fossil fuel workers that their employment and incomes will be protected.”
Stanford added that a new oil pipeline megaproject, like the one envisioned in last month’s sweeping memorandum of understanding between Canada and Alberta, won’t reverse the trend. “Building a pipeline creates medium-term construction, he said—but no more than equivalent amounts spent on other energy investments” in renewable energy, transition, energy retrofits, or public transit.
On a global scale, many of those job categories are soaring, the International Energy Agency reported Friday, with the energy sector outpacing the global economy in 2024 for the third year in a row and increasing its work force to 76 million.
“Strong investment in energy infrastructure drove a 2.2 per cent rise in energy jobs last year, nearly double the rate of employment growth for the wider global economy,” the Paris-based agency said in a release, with electricity surpassing fuel supply as the biggest industry employer for the first time.
The IEA reports that:
• Photovoltaic solar has been a “principal driver of demand, accounting for half of the job additions in the electricity sector since 2019.”
• Almost all the jobs in the power sector were in low-emitting power generation, grids, or storage, with only a small percentage in unabated fossil generation.
• Nuclear power, grids, and storage have provided 25 per cent of the new power sector jobs.
• Offshore wind saw layoffs in turbine manufacturing and other “persistent challenge”, leading to a 6 per cent job decline last year.
• Jobs in electric vehicle manufacturing grew by 800,000, with EVs and batteries now accounting for about 40 per cent of automotive employment in China.
• Oil and gas has recovered most of the jobs it lost in the COVID-19 pandemic. But “it now appears that many firms are entering a new period of retrenchment in the face of lower oil prices and revenues, with a number of major oil companies announcing job cuts in 2025.”
• Coal jobs have increased in India, China, and Indonesia, growing 8 per cent between 2019 and 2024.
Skilled worker shortages emerged as a key concern in the IEA’s annual Energy Employment Survey, with more than half of respondents reporting critical hiring bottlenecks and an aging work force compounding the problem.
“Most of the top energy occupations facing constraints within energy are considered applied technical roles, including electricians, pipefitters, electrical power line workers, and engineers, particularly in nuclear,” the IEA wrote. “Many of these broader categories are already in short supply across the wider economy.”
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