PolitiFact Rhode Island examined 6 July 2014 a claim by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of 27 May 2014 and found that:

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said that solar industry jobs have now outpaced coal-mining jobs.

The most recent data from three objective sources support his claim.

The one source that offered a contrary view, the National Mining Association, cited two-year-old numbers and counted categories such as off-site transportation workers on coal barges and ocean freighters.

Because Whitehouse’s statement was specifically about coal-mining jobs, we rule it True.

We already knew that, but PolitiFact dredged up at least one extra source to confirm it.

And remember, there are also more solar jobs than “production and nonsupervisory jobs” in oil and gas extraction, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ numbers for oil and gas. If snowy Buffalo, a thousand miles and a dozen degrees of latitude north of here can land thousands of solar jobs, we should be able to here in south Georgia, too.

-jsq

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