April 29, 2025 - In the 2010s, coal mining employment in the US declined by over 50 percent. In new research, Jonathan Colmer and Eleanor Krause look at how costly this change has been for coal workers. The researchers find that these workers not only suffered significant earnings losses – equivalent to a 20 percent reduction each year – and high rates of non-employment, but they also had little success transitioning into new jobs in different industries or regions. 

While coal represents only a small share of overall US employment, it has long been an important source of jobs and income in coal-producing regions, particularly in Central Appalachia and parts of the Mountain West. However, as Figure 1 shows, between 2011 and 2021, coal mining employment declined by over 50 percent in the United States. This precipitous decline, largely driven by the rise of fracking and the subsequent dominance of natural gas in electricity generation, has profoundly affected coal workers and their communities.

Note: This figure shows the total number of coal mining establishments (on the left axis) and total coal mining employment (on the right axis) between 2005 and 2021.

What has the collapse of coal meant for workers?

Despite widespread recognition of coal’s decline, we still lack a clear, worker-level understanding of how this change has played out in practice. How costly has the collapse of coal been for affected workers? Did displaced workers move to new jobs or regions, or did they exit the labor force? To what extent did existing skills, geographic mobility, or local labor market conditions shape these outcomes? Prior research has often focused on aggregate patterns and trends, leaving open important questions about individual labor market adjustment and the broader distributional consequences of the energy transition.

In new research, we provide a comprehensive and systematic analysis of how the collapse of the coal industry has impacted coal workers. We do this by taking advantage of administrative data on the earnings, employment, and residential location of all coal workers in the United States between 2005 and 2021. We find that coal workers suffered significant earnings losses, high rates of unemployment, and limited success transitioning into new jobs in different industries or regions. These findings preview the challenges other workers may face as broader transitions away from fossil fuels reshape the labor market. 

Earnings declines have been large and persistent

Coal workers experienced substantial and persistent earnings reductions during the industry’s recent collapse. Workers who were employed full-time in coal mining prior to 2011 experienced overall earnings losses amounting to 1.6 times their pre-decline annual wages over the 2012 to 2019 period (Figure 2). This is equivalent to a persistent 20 percent reduction in earnings per year. 

Figure 2 – Coal workers’ earnings losses accumulate over time

Note: The figure describes the change in coal workers’ cumulative earnings between 2012 and the year indicated on the x-axis, normalized by average annual earnings over the 2007-2011 period.

These cumulative losses were driven by two main factors:

• Reductions in Employment: During coal’s decline, coal workers spent significantly fewer years employed compared to similar workers in other industries.
• Lower Wages in New Jobs: Even when employed, coal workers earned substantially less – 17 percent lower per year employed – than they did in the years preceding coal’s decline.

We find that unemployment is a common outcome for coal workers. This pattern is likely a result of the geographic and skill-specific nature of coal mining. The industry is heavily concentrated in relatively remote and economically distressed regions that offer few alternative, high-paying employment opportunities. Moreover, coal miners might have highly specialized skills that are not easily transferable to other occupations.

Moving or changing industries did little to mitigate earnings losses 

We also found that neither geographic mobility nor switching industries significantly mitigated the consequences of coal’s decline. Coal workers who transitioned to other industries earned, on average, 30 percent less per year in those other industries compared to what they received in coal before the industry’s collapse. Notably, coal workers suffer large earnings losses even when they transition to other sectors that tend to pay relatively high wages.

Coal workers who relocated to work in other labor markets fared no better than those who remained in their home regions — earnings and employment losses were equally severe whether or not workers moved.

Government support became a key source of income

When workers experience large earnings and employment losses during an industry’s collapse, they may turn to alternative sources of income to supplement lost wages. We find a significant increase in Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) receipt among coal workers during the period of coal’s decline; however, the increase in SSDI payments only partially offset losses.

The broader costs of the clean energy transition 

The shift away from carbon-intensive energy sources is critical to mitigating climate change, but this energy transition carries substantial risks for workers in fossil fuel industries. This new research shows that coal workers suffered large and persistent earnings losses after 2011 as the industry experienced its precipitous decline. Many left the workforce entirely, while those who transitioned to other industries or regions were largely unsuccessful at avoiding substantial earnings losses. The collapse of the US coal industry offers a cautionary tale about the worker-level consequences of the energy transition.

These findings underscore the high transition costs borne by workers in regionally concentrated and skill-specific industries, characteristics shared by many fossil fuel and energy-intensive industries. As broader shifts away from carbon-intensive energy sources put more of the workforce at risk, the experiences of coal workers provide important lessons for what may lie ahead. Further work to understand the constraints that workers face, and which policy levers may be effective in helping to reduce them is essential going forward if we are to minimize the social costs of the clean energy transition.