Rosemary Barnes and Allen Hall review the latest employment data from the Airswift Global Energy Talent Index. 31% of survey respondents have been approached about a position with another company SIX TIMES OR MORE in the past year! That indicates a big boom in wind energy for technicians and site managers. However, oil and gas salaries and benefits continue to be a big draw out of wind.

The full report is available here – https://www.airswift.com/geti/

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Uptime 156 Bonus

Allen Hall: This is a special bonus episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, and I’m here with Rosemary Barnes. And Rosemary, the Global Energy Talent Index Report came out and it’s a product of Air Swift. Air Swift is a company that finds talent for your company, and they do research into what’s happening in renewables in terms of employees and what they’re thinking, what they’re feeling, what they’re getting paid, and who’s moving in, who’s moving out.

Allen Hall: So I, I took a kind of a deep dive in this report. I wanted to talk to you about it today and kind of get your thoughts because a lot of people in wind in particular have a lot to think about over the next. Because wind energy is expanding so quickly, there’s a lot of opportunities and that’s good, but it also creates a little bit of chaos.

Allen Hall: if you’re looking for talent. So I’ll throw some numbers at you. Okay. In, in terms of wind Farm project managers, what they make, A year in the, in the United States. The, the report actually gives it by country. I, I’m just talking United States here. It doesn’t apply everywhere. Of course project managers in the US if they’re permanent the average salary is $74,000, a little over $74,000 a year.

Allen Hall: If they’re contract workers, it’s about $525 a day. Wind turbine technicians permanent ones are getting paid about $57,000 a year, or if they’re on contract about four, a little over $400 a day. Those are some good numbers. I, I think they’ve been going up recently. So at Wind Turine Tech making 58,000 thousand dollars is not bad.

Allen Hall: I know a lot of technicians that are making a. Hundred plus those guys are really busting their backside to do it. Does. But as part of this, because Sallys are going up and oil and gas is booming, which is roughly in the same area in the United States, there’s a lot of moving around. But I, I want to talk to you in specific about what some of the issues were for employees.

Allen Hall: The, it does look like in the renewable sector, a lot of people are willing to relocate, right? Or if half of the people surveyed would be willing to relocate, however if you, if you’re, most of the people were under the age of 45, but if they have family, they’re less likely to move. So it seems like once you establish yourselves somewhere and have a couple of kids that probably get ’em in school, You’re not likely to move around.

Allen Hall: So it tends to be kind of a younger scene on the technician side. I, I’m guessing because of that, because of all the travel? 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. The wind turbine techs that I work with. Oh. I don’t know. It’s a, it’s a mix. I guess. There’s a lot more really young ones, but you definitely have. to have some experience in there as well.

Rosemary Barnes: So I say a mix. 

Allen Hall: They also they were asking the employees in the renewable sector if, if their companies have been involved in any disruptions, regardless of what that would be, that has reduced profits or revenues. And about a little bit, a third of the respondents said, yeah our, their business had been.

Allen Hall: In profits and revenues, which is, that’s the highest percentage of respondents, more than th a third of them. Actually 36% than any other sector. In the energy business. So wind got hit, and I guess solar got hit hard over the last couple of years because of covid where oil and gas obviously didn’t get hit as hard because they were already pumping oil drilling for gas.

Allen Hall: But, and, but that creates a little bit of, of an offset, right? That win techs when project managers see their oil and gas counterparts not in that situ. There’s a big draw of renewable workers into oil and gas at the moment, cuz it pay, maybe pays a little bit better, probably less travel and better upside.

Allen Hall: So we’re even in a time where we’re seeing a really tight employment base for when technicians, a lot of them are moving to oil and gas or are willing. That’s a, that’s not great . At least in the United 

Rosemary Barnes: States. Yeah. Well, you know what else that could do? I’ve just just now while you’re talking, looking at the, the figures, cuz like you said, that it’s separated out by a country.

Rosemary Barnes: And you mentioned the figure for a wind farm project manager in the US and I noticed in Australia it’s more than double. So if you want to more than double your salary, Then I suggest yeah, heading, heading over to Australia. It’s interesting cause I just I have just been quoting for some international jobs and for site visits in, in the region.

Rosemary Barnes: And now I’m a bit worried that, you know, I’m quoting on Australian industry prices that I’ve gotta be way, way off the mark when it comes to, you know, working with us or European companies. That’s an astounding difference, right? I mean, I know there’s a huge shortage here and there’s just not many people with the experience and you know, I, I take that to my advantage, definitely the experience that I gained working in Europe, in the factories and in wind farms.

Rosemary Barnes: It’s rare in Australia. And yeah, so I’m benefiting, but I was shocked to see that it’s literally, literally double and then when you compare to to Europe, it’s. Nearly triple Australian salary compared to European. So Wow. Well, if you’re willing to 

Allen Hall: move, yeah. You, you can actually earn more money if it, it’s changing lifestyle for sure.

Allen Hall: If you’re moving out of Texas to Australia. I wouldn’t say that’s the same sort of lifestyle. But yeah, you could actually make more money. 

Rosemary Barnes: I dunno if you moved to Queensland, maybe. I, I reckon rural Australia doesn’t have such a different vibe to, to Texas. A a, a little bit, obviously. I mean, a, a lot. I mean, it’s, it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be different.

Rosemary Barnes: But yeah, it’s, it’s nice here. You know, the weather’s. The weather’s nice. Beaches are nice. Do they have trucks? 

Allen Hall: They have pickup 

Rosemary Barnes: trucks in Australia. Is that a thing? Okay, come on. We invented it. We, that is an Australian invention, so look. Just settle, settle down. . The story is it’s a farmer who wanted, he wanted a way to be able to have the same car to work on his farm during the week and still be able to take his mom to church on the weekend.

Rosemary Barnes: So he invented the, the utility vehicle, we call them mutes in Australia, not pickup trucks, but same 

Allen Hall: if the market is so tight in renewable energy at the moment. This is a crazy number, and when I read it, like I had to read it two or three times to make sure I understood it. 31% of the respondents have indicated they had been approached about a position in another company, six or more times.

Allen Hall: That is astounding. , 

Rosemary Barnes: is it the same, the same job that’s approaching them six times? Cause I feel like, you know, at that point they’re not getting the message. 

Allen Hall: no means no. If I, I’m assuming this is around technicians, right? That, that the technicians are getting called all the time. If, if your technician profile pops up on LinkedIn and it looks like you’re open to work, you’re gonna have.

Allen Hall: People, recruiters reaching out to you all the time, but six times a third of the respondents six times or more. That’s, that’s insane. It seems like that would naturally force pay rates, right? If you’re, if there’s that much demand, there’s, there’s gotta be a breaking point here. Either they’re gonna have to start paying technicians and project managers, site managers more money, or they’re gonna have to start training a bunch of.

Allen Hall: That’s what that indicates, right? I mean, what else does it, what else 

Rosemary Barnes: can you do? Yeah, and I mean, I know the last time that I did my G W O training, the training that you gotta do when you wanna be able to climb wind turbines, the types of people that were there, there was very few who had been in the industry before.

Rosemary Barnes: Most people were doing it for the first time. And they were all tradespeople from any kind of random trade that had, you know, decided they. Yeah, they wanted to get into the wind industry either because they cared about the the environment and the future of their industry or because of a lifestyle change.

Rosemary Barnes: There was one young he was a, an electric electrical apprentice. And he had moved from Sydney to. Which, where was it? Somewhere in rural new South Wales, just because the cost of living in Sydney is so crazy that he couldn’t, he, he couldn’t live remotely close to his, his work in the city.

Rosemary Barnes: And so he’s just moved for the rural lifestyle and, and loves it. So yeah, you see people changing from all sorts of different backgrounds. The skills that you need as a wind turbine technician aren’t so different to what you need. Yeah. As in, you know, in plenty of other industries. And the same for Windfarm project management, the job ads that I see in Australia, and the, that’s the kind of things that I guess that I get cold, cold about on, on LinkedIn.

Rosemary Barnes: They’re looking for like construction project management or yeah, a variety of other kinds of, of engineering. So, You know, there’s transferable skills there. You certainly don’t need to have worked in the wind industry before. If you’re, you know, a good, a good project manager and you especially like construction in, in Australia, a lot of the jobs are to do with new wind farms more so than maintaining existing ones.

Rosemary Barnes: And so then, you know, it is a lot about we need to get approvals for, you know, a range of different approvals and permits and we need to build roads and, you know, all those sorts of things. Scheduling of, of different, you know, trades and bits of equipment. It’s, it’s not so un unusual. So I think, yeah, people, if you’re in a, a related industry and you see these figures and these salaries are more than what you’re making and you think it sounds interesting, then.

Rosemary Barnes: Make the move. It’s not, not as big a deal as you might think. Well, 

Allen Hall: I’m gonna throw some anecdotal info at you. You can come back to me and say, Alan, you idiot. It’s anecdotal information, but I, I do get comments on YouTube, on our YouTube channel. Go Weather, guard, wind and Look Up Uptime on YouTube. And there was a comment there just recently and it stuck with me, said was someone who was in.

Allen Hall: To be a technician and the person said there were 30 when they started. There are 10 now, and they’re not done. But 

Rosemary Barnes: is it a a certificate course, like a college course or community college? Yeah, community 

Allen Hall: colleges. You see a lot of community colleges having programs and there’s some private. Training situations and Rangal renewables is setting up their, up their own training system down there in Texas.

Allen Hall: And others are too. I think GE V is trying to do something similar, but I, I’m just concerned about what the dropout rate is because if you lose, say you lose half of them, then you gotta sort of double an amount of candidates to come into the door. So you just have enough to. To feed the amount of wind turbine work you have in the United States, we’re gonna go from about 70, 80,000 wind turbines to 200,000, right?

Allen Hall: So we’re gonna need to at least double the technician workforce over the next couple of years. I don’t know if that’s gonna happen without some significant pay increases in wind. And that doesn’t feel like the wind sector is willing to do that at the moment. I was at American Clean Power last week and we were discussing bringing new technicians in.

Allen Hall: It’s because everybody’s looking for technicians at the moment and how difficult it is to get them because there is a significant amount of dropout. And we were bantering about, about what’s the dropout rate all about. And I’m, my conclusion was, . A lot of people don’t like to climb at height. I think a lot of people make it to the point where they then they start to climb.

Allen Hall: It’s a serious. Thing. I mean, if you’re afraid of heights, it’s not like you’re climbing a a, a step ladder to ch to check the gutters, going a hundred plus feet in the air. It’s a long way down. And, and probably a lot of people don’t realize that they’re afraid of heights until they get there and realize, like, one, it’s a lot of work.

Allen Hall: And two, if they have any sort of concern about it mentally, like, I don’t feel safe. You’re not gonna stick around long. I, I, I assume that’s what’s driving it because otherwise a lot of these, I assume a lot of the technicians come outta the military and other industrial jobs, and that’s the part where they have trouble.

Allen Hall: So some of the reasons, Rosemary, some of the reasons that people want to work in wind is because according to the survey, it aligns with a lot of their values in regards to helping the planet decarbonization. and working in a collaborative environment and, and also a sort of a flexible work environment.

Allen Hall: I think renewables is one of those. You can have that. And as The industry continues to grow, that’s gonna be one of the pieces that draws new recruits to it. And you, you were in it directly. Rosemary, you have more of a feeling for it than I do. Does, does. Is that something you saw while working in in 

Rosemary Barnes: Wind?

Rosemary Barnes: It’s really changed a lot. Cause I’ve been working with renewables for, for close. Ish to 20 years now, and at the start it was all, you know, people who were pretty environmentally inclined. Everyone was, was doing it because they had a passion for saving the planet and we were all taking a, a decent pay cut.

Rosemary Barnes: I remember my first job in renewables industry when it came to my first salary review. I did some. Which I, I stupidly had not done. When I accepted the position, I did some salary benchmarking research and found out that I was underpaid by 30%. And when I went into the review, they said, well, yeah, because it’s a renewables industry and you know, that’s what you have to, you have to do.

Rosemary Barnes: If you wanna, you know, do good for the planet, then you are not going to do well financially. And then if you fast forward through to my time at when I was working at LM Windpower wind turbine blade manufacturer, I had colleagues who didn’t even believe in climate change. You know, it was just a regular mainstream industry that people were doing.

Rosemary Barnes: Cause I liked the, the kind of work because it was a job, you know, locally that matched their skills. All sorts of reasons. And I think that the, the money. coming up pretty close. Like it, it might not be on par with fossil fuel industry jobs now, but compared to most other kinds of engineering, you don’t really have to take a hit anymore in your, in your salary to work in the wind industry.

Rosemary Barnes: And I, I think that that’s, It’s really huge because you get a much bigger talent pool and you don’t, you know, you don’t burn people out. It burns you out when you’re working, when you’re, you know, so undervalued compared to what you could earn somewhere else. So I, I, I think that the industry has matured so much in the 20 years that I’ve been involved.

Rosemary Barnes: Do you think it’s gonna cross 

Allen Hall: oil and gas? You think renewables will pass oil and gas in terms. Of, of pay and benefits. Are we getting clo we’re getting close. 

Rosemary Barnes: Yes. And I think it will be partly because oil and gas will eventually taper off because you, you, you know it, it’s gonna be , there’s gonna be less and less of it, so they’re gonna need less people.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. But I do also see uh, heaps of people that have moved from oil and gas industry to renewables because they, you know, want to feel good about the work that they’re, they’re doing. And they kind of, That they’re still gonna earn good money. And same with a lot of finance people. You know, there’s, there’s a lot of people working in renewable energy finance now that have come from, you know, traditional finance background.

Rosemary Barnes: They’re not taking a 30% baker to come work in the industry. And so, you know, people like me benefit from that because I, I, you know, I don’t accept less now than I would in. Industry. And I don’t have to. So I think it’s really . I think it’s really good that for the industry that we can get good people and keep good people.

Allen Hall: Let, let me ask you this, cuz you’ve done both sides, that you’ve been in the corporate win world and as you’re running your own business. What’s, what’s the preferred path for someone coming in? Would it be better to basically getting to a, a small business or start your own consulting company if you’re an engineer, or be, do your own technician thing as a technician, or is, is the pathway into the industry going into a large 

Rosemary Barnes: corporation?

Rosemary Barnes: I don’t think you can start out with consulting. I mean, I would have no clients if I didn’t have that industry experience. You know, like a, a solid, solid chunk. And that’s what I’ve got. That’s quite rare in Australia. There aren’t many people here that have worked so long and you know, I spent months and months in factories in Europe and America and also spent a, a lot of time in wind farms climbing up turbines.

Rosemary Barnes: Without that, I wouldn’t have a consulting practice, especially not in the, the wind industry. A lot of engineers are going into like major consulting companies and they’re, they’re getting work, but I personally don’t see the, the quality and those kinds of engineers that have only worked in consulting.

Rosemary Barnes: I think if you wanted to go on and have a really. Interesting career then. You know, as an engineer, you ha you need to get your hands dirty. You need to go where the things are, you know, where, where they’re happening. All the kinds of problems that you deal with as a consultant, you need to have been on the, the, the other side, the manufacturer or the you, you know, someone a technician or, you know yeah, working in a, a factory or at a wind farm.

Rosemary Barnes: You accelerate the learning by like 10 or a hundred times. You just learn so fast in those environments. So I definitely recommend doing that, doing that first, and then deciding you don’t have to do it forever. I certainly wouldn’t work in a wind turbine factory full-time. I never have worked there full-time, but I would have, when I was young, I would never do it.

Rosemary Barnes: Now, you know, you need so much energy to support 24 7 factory operations and. You learn, learn fast and weigh yourself out, . It’s exhausting. 

Allen Hall: So that, that’s really good advice, Rosemary that to get into wind, it does help to, to go with an established company, get some understanding of how the business works, get, get your experience in, and then when you can, if you can transition to do your own thing.

Allen Hall: There’s a lot of people in wind in the renewable sector. That are running their own businesses and rightly so. That’s good, and you’re a good example of that.