The hydrogen economy and jobs of the future

Abstract

Growth in the hydrogen and fuel cell industries will lead to vast new employment opportunities, and these will be created in a wide variety of industries, skills, tasks, and earnings. Many of these jobs do not currently exist and do not have occupational titles defined in official classifications. In addition, many of these jobs require different skills and education than current jobs, and training requirements must be assessed so that this rapidly growing part of the economy has a sufficient supply of trained and qualified workers. We discuss the current hydrogen economy and technologies. We then identify by occupational titles the new jobs that will be created in the expanding hydrogen/fuel cell economy, estimate the average US salary for each job, identify the minimum educational attainment required to gain entry into that occupation, and specify the recommended university degree for the advanced educational requirements. We provide recommendations for further research.