Need for linemen surges
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With an aging workforce walking toward the retirement door, U.S. electric utilities are struggling to find new employees, especially linemen who keep power flowing through the high-voltage cables.
“This is a huge problem,” said Stephen P. Reynolds, chairman and chief executive of Puget Energy Inc., the biggest utility in Washington state. “Young people are not jumping for joy to become linemen.”
Linemen maintain the reliability of the grid. They are the workhorses who install and repair power lines, transformers and other gear and often must toil during storms, wildfires and other punishing conditions.
Officers and managers of investor-owned and municipal utilities rank reliability of their electric systems and aging employees as two of their top worries, according to a survey by Black & Veatch Corp., an engineering, construction and consulting firm based in Kansas City, Mo.
An expected shortage of 10,000 line workers could eventually limit utilities’ ability to maintain or increase electricity supply, potentially affecting the economic and national security of the U.S., a Department of Energy report said.
There are an estimated 43,000 apprentice and journeymen line workers, whereas about half the power industry’s roughly 400,000 technical and office workers are eligible for retirement within five years, said Jim Hunter, utility director for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in Washington.
Workforce levels in the electric industry have dropped by more than 23% since peaking in 1990 at 500,000 employees, even as power generation has increased by more than 30%, according to a study by the Carnegie Mellon University Electricity Industry Center in Pittsburgh.
Hunter blames utility deregulation in the late 1990s and job cuts for labor shortages.
“Utilities cut operating costs and got lean and mean, and the trend lasted for a long time,” he said. “Now we have a crisis. It takes four to five years to train someone to get to journeyman level.”
Utility training programs also have been hobbled by a “brain drain” of trainers opting for retirement, Hunter said.
The power industry, however, has launched programs to recruit and train skilled workers, representatives said.
“We are going through the baby boom effect with a large bubble of retirees in five to 10 years, and the jobs are not viewed as employment of choice,” said Mary Miller, vice president for human resources at the Edison Electric Institute Inc., a trade group based in Washington.
The institute’s “view on electric reliability is directly related to the commitment of utility CEOs to ensure the system is reliable,” Miller said. “We are optimistic.”
This year the institute, the American Gas Assn. and the Nuclear Energy Institute established the Center for Energy Workforce Development to promote utility careers, recruit job candidates and prepare training materials.
Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the utility unit of PG&E; Corp. of San Francisco, runs a 42-month apprentice program that includes eight weeks of classes and training costing $18,000 per apprentice.
Miller cited Gulf Power Co., a Southern Co. subsidiary based in Pensacola, Fla., as another successful training model. The utility set up the Gulf Power Academy at a local high school to offer a three-year program of regular academic courses while readying students for utility careers.
Energy training also is offered at community colleges in New Jersey, Washington and other states.
