America's fastest-growing job is booming in Indiana
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Indiana is a top spot for the nation's fastest-growing field: wind energy.
Why it matters: Wind turbine service technician is the hottest job in the country, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with 60% growth projected between 2023-2033.
Driving the news: Indiana has 10.2 wind energy-related jobs per 10,000 residents as of last year, the fifth most in the U.S.
- That's according to the 2024 U.S. Energy & Employment Jobs Report and 2023 census data.
- We only trail North Dakota (22.3), South Dakota (20.4), Colorado (13.4) and Iowa (12.4).
Yes, but: Texas has the highest number of wind energy jobs overall, at nearly 27,400.
- That's more than double that of the next-highest state, Illinois, which has about 9,400.
- Indiana, meanwhile, has nearly 7,000.
Reality check: The overall number of wind turbine tech jobs is still small: 11,400 nationwide as of 2023, per BLS. (Compare that to 349,600 for nurse practitioners, another top-five growth job.)
Also worth noting: The Energy Department report captures a variety of wind-related jobs, whereas the BLS' growth rankings highlight turbine service technicians specifically.
The big picture: According to the Department of Energy, clean energy employment increased by 142,000 jobs in 2023.
- That accounted for more than half of new energy sector jobs and grew at a rate more than twice as large as the rest of the energy sector.
- Indiana had 280,900 energy workers statewide in 2023, representing 3.4% of all U.S. energy jobs.
The bottom line: Wind and solar — another big-growth field — increasingly look like pretty safe career bets, especially with the federal government pushing them big time.