A 'Dirty' Job That Few Want: Mining Companies Struggle to Hire for the Energy Transition

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

69% : "As soon as you realize mining is essential, the most important thing is to get involved," said Dickson.
68% : For Dickson, mining offers the chance to travel, work outdoors and research into sustainability, along with feeding her fascination with how the world works.
60% : Canada and Australia, countries where mining is a significant economic contributor, also saw student enrollment to related courses drop.
59% : However, not everyone agrees that mining is essential to the energy transition.
58% : Recruiting workers from within Africa keeps them relatively local and brings people with relevant knowledge from places such as Congo, Ghana and Zimbabwe that have more recent experience of mining compared with places like Europe, said Martin Horgan, CEO of Centamin.
57% : Companies that mine copper, lithium and other metals -- viewed as a critical part of the supply chain to produce green energy -- say they are struggling to find enough young workers to support the transition.
51% : In the U.S., the job vacancy rate for mining and logging was 5.1% in March, up from 3.6% five years ago, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
49% :More than half the mine workers in the U.S. are aged 45 years or older, according to Rohitesh Dhawan, chief executive of industry group, International Council on Mining and Metals.
43% : "A certain amount of mining is necessary but the current profit-driven industry is responsible for wide-scale environmental and ecological devastation as well as countless acts of human rights abuses," said Jamie Kelsey Fry, a spokesman for U.K.-based environmental pressure group Extinction Rebellion.
38% : Mining is among the few industries that continue to be male dominated and has a reputation as being unsafe for women.
36% : It is among the worst ranked professions for young people to enter: A global survey by consulting firm McKinsey found 70% of its 15- to 30-year-old respondents said that they definitely wouldn't or probably wouldn't work in mining.
36% : Rio Tinto found 28% of women working in mining experienced sexual harassment while 21 women reported cases of actual or attempted rape or sexual assault in the past five years, according to a 2022 report based on its survey of 10,000 employees.

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