U.S. Power Generation Industry Suffers Jobs Losses

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) (Knoxville, Tennessee) has laid off half of the 900 contractors currently working on the half-finished Bellefonte nuclear power plant in Alabama and will layoff possibly 1,000 additional TVA employees. This qualifies as a mass layoff under federal guidelines. The purging of contractors and employees is due to the mild winter temperatures which lost the company about $94 million in income as well as costs from the delayed and over-budget Watts Bar Unit 2 nuclear project in Tennessee, which increased from $1.5 billion to an estimated $4-$4.5 billion and has had some project management turnover as well. The delayed and over-budget Watts Bar project affected the work on the Bellefonte project, which cannot start work until the loading of nuclear fuel rods at the Watts Bar facility is completed.

Older coal-fired power plants throughout the U.S. are being shut down and the plant management, operators and maintenance personnel must either retire, be moved to other positions or the jobs are going away and this is reflected in the high unemployment rate nationwide. Though new natural gas fired power plants are being constructed, due to historically low natural gas prices, it takes less people to run these types of facilities and the employees that are left employed are doing more than one job which is reflected in the high unemployment numbers throughout the power industry.

The power industry layoffs are not only effecting fossil fuel power projects, but also renewable energy projects such as wind and solar. These are also hemorrhaging personnel in the project development offices and manufacturing facilities around the country due to the inability of congress to renew the production tax credit (PTC). Without the PTC incentive, as well as the already low natural gas prices, renewable energy producers will lose an estimated 37,000 jobs according to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA).

Though the U.S. economy is supposed to be out of the recession it is still not growing fast enough to create enough jobs for new graduates, people who have left employment for whatever reason and want to rejoin the workforce, as well as people who have been laid off from their current career field and want employment in any field that will pay them a wage.

Industrial Information Resources has seen the U.S. economy and power production industry go through tough recessions before and typically both will come through leaner but financially stronger in the long run.

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Industrial Info Resources (IIR), with global headquarters in Sugar Land, Texas, and eight offices outside of North America, is the leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy markets. Industrial Info's quality-assurance philosophy, the Living Forward Reporting Principle™, provides up-to-the-minute intelligence on what's happening now, while constantly keeping track of future opportunities.