If You Got a New Job Last Year, There's a Pretty Good Chance It Was in the Solar Industry

If you got a new job over the last year or so, there's a pretty solid chance you got it in the clean energy industry. Solar, specifically. After all, one out of every 142 new jobs filled since 2012 were in the solar alone—the sector has grown 20 percent in a single year. Solar is absolutely thriving right now, even though our media and politics seem determined to tell a story to the contrary.

The numbers come from the annual National Solar Jobs Census, a survey carried out by the Solar Foundation and George Washington University. It highlights the fact that there are now 142,698 solar employees in the US, a figure that includes over 18,000 new jobs added in just the last year. That rate of new employment is "10 times faster than the national average employment rate of 1.9 percent," according to the census.

All of which is to say: Cleantech is not dead, contrary to any absurd narrative fabricated about its demise. Solar certainly isn't. And it's not just conservative politicians who've found that clean energy is disagreeable to their oily donor bases, or pundits who've let a special loathing for anything remotely hippie-related fester in their bellies for decades.

Mainstream media hasn't been able to resist, either: 60 Minutes recently aired a confused and misleading piece purporting to announce the death of cleantech, following a Wired piece that did the same the year before. Both focused on a handful of now-defunct cleantech companies, and mostly on Solyndra, Fox News' favorite government loan-taking solar casualty. Both ignored the numerous sucesses.

Yet any cursory look at the bigger picture—and the facts—yields an entirely different story. Cleantech is soaring. Tesla's electric cars are so profitable that the company already paid back all of its government loans. But let's stick to the sun—the New York Times just heralded a "Solar Craze on Wall St". The paper noted that "In all, an estimated $13 billion was invested in solar projects in 2013, a tenfold increase since 2007, according to GTM Research, which tracks the industry."

SolarCity is a fine example of the surge. Its unique leasing scheme has made solar available to thousands of new consumers, and has become a market darling in just over a year. Its stock has soared to highs of $79 this month, from $14 this time last year. It's worth $5 billion now, and has received 0 government loans. It also employs thousands of people.

Other undeniable solar successes abound: Last year, APS opened one of the world's biggest concentrated solar plants, Solana Generating Station, in Arizona. The new technology will allow solar power to serve as baseload, providing power to residents even after dark. Another solar installer, RGS, had $34 million in quarterly earnings last year, too.

As a whole, 5,700 megawatts of new solar capacity was installed last year, or 37 percent of all new power generation in the US. Even the American subsidiary of the Chinese company accused in the 60 Minutes piece of scooping up taxpayer-funded solar startups is turning its solar properties around—creating 6,000 American jobs in the process.

As of last fall, the cost of solar had fallen 60 percent in a year and a half. That's mostly thanks to the ramping of mass manufacturing of solar panels in China, which is driving prices down across the board. Plenty of American and European companies, like Solar City, have benefitted from the cheaper materials—and plenty haven't, too—but the end result is undeniable: solar is booming.

Solar is cheaper, more nimble, and the subject of more innovation, both on the technological and the marketing side, than it ever has been. Maybe most importantly, it's creating more jobs—many, many more than most other industries. Solar continues to gain steam—and this is important to note—despite an active campaign by a hook-hungry media, disapproving politicians, and threatened old guard utilities to keep it at bay. It speaks to the strong fundamentals of solar that it is continuing to boom in the market, even when everyone is trying to claim that it's not.