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Energy & Natural Resources

National Career Cluster · the map of work

Energy & Natural Resources is one of the 14 national career clusters — the U.S. Department of Education's map that divides the whole world of work into broad families, each crosswalked to occupations, education programs, and industries. This cluster spans 87 occupations across 6 sub-clusters, employing about 9,172,240 workers, with a median wage of $70,500.

What's in this cluster

A career cluster is a navigational grouping, not a measured score. The counts below come from the framework's official crosswalk; employment and pay are aggregated from BLS OEWS (national, cross-industry, May 2024) across the occupations in the cluster.

87 occupations
6 sub-clusters
9,172,240 workers (BLS)
$70,500 median pay
247 education programs

Across occupations with wage data, the middle range (25th–75th percentile of occupation medians) runs $59,220 – $95,435. This describes the cluster, not any one job or person.

Sub-clusters

The framework splits each cluster into sub-clusters — tighter families of related work. The count is the number of occupations the crosswalk places in each.

Sub-cluster Occupations
Resource Extraction 35
Utilities 28
Ecological Research & Development 25
Conservation & Land Management 18
Clean & Alternative Energy 13
Environmental Protection 9

Largest occupations in this cluster

Exposure quadrant: AI task-overlap percentile vs Median pay AI task-overlap (horizontal) versus median pay (vertical), each as a percentile across all scored occupations, for 40 occupations in Energy & Natural Resources. Overlap measures shared tasks with AI, not automation. Lower overlap · higher pay Higher overlap · higher pay Higher overlap · lower pay Lower overlap · lower pay Roustabouts, Oil and Gas Service Unit Operators, Oil and Gas Excavating and Loading Machine and Dragline Operators, Surface Mining Septic Tank Servicers and Sewer Pipe Cleaners Electrical Power-Line Installers and Repairers Industrial Machinery Mechanics Telecommunications Line Installers and Repairers Power Plant Operators Facilities Managers First-Line Supervisors of Construction Trades and Extraction Workers Environmental Science and Protection Technicians, Including Health Surveyors General and Operations Managers Industrial Engineering Technologists and Technicians Surveying and Mapping Technicians Engineers, All Other Architectural and Engineering Managers Biological Scientists, All Other Compliance Officers AI task-overlap percentile → ↑ Median pay
The largest occupations in this cluster with both an AI task-overlap score and a wage, plotted by task-overlap percentile (horizontal) and median-pay percentile (vertical). Overlap measures shared tasks with AI, not automation.

Occupations in this cluster with the most workers nationally (BLS OEWS, May 2024), each linked to its full profile. Employment and pay describe the occupation, not an individual.

Occupation Workers Median pay
General and Operations Managers 3,584,420 $102,950
First-Line Supervisors of Construction Trades and Extraction Workers 806,080 $78,690
First-Line Supervisors of Mechanics, Installers, and Repairers 600,680 $78,300
Industrial Machinery Mechanics 421,940 $63,760
Compliance Officers 397,770 $78,420
Firefighters 332,240 $59,530
Architectural and Engineering Managers 210,340 $167,740
Telecommunications Equipment Installers and Repairers, Except Line Installers 153,890 $62,630
Engineers, All Other 150,750 $117,750
Facilities Managers 141,090 $104,690
Refuse and Recyclable Material Collectors 139,180 $48,350
Water and Wastewater Treatment Plant and System Operators 126,750 $58,260
Electrical Power-Line Installers and Repairers 123,680 $92,560
Natural Sciences Managers 100,870 $161,180
Telecommunications Line Installers and Repairers 98,360 $70,500
Electronics Engineers, Except Computer 93,940 $127,590
Electrical and Electronic Engineering Technologists and Technicians 92,710 $77,180
Environmental Scientists and Specialists, Including Health 84,930 $80,060
Industrial Engineering Technologists and Technicians 73,410 $64,790
Engineering Technologists and Technicians, Except Drafters, All Other 64,410 $77,390
Civil Engineering Technologists and Technicians 62,130 $64,200
Biological Scientists, All Other 59,710 $93,330
Surveying and Mapping Technicians 56,720 $51,940
Technical Writers 55,530 $91,670
Surveyors 53,080 $72,740
Hazardous Materials Removal Workers 50,570 $48,490
Roustabouts, Oil and Gas 45,330 $47,510
Service Unit Operators, Oil and Gas 44,120 $57,980
Environmental Science and Protection Technicians, Including Health 39,390 $49,490
Environmental Engineers 37,950 $104,170
Social Scientists and Related Workers, All Other 36,970 $100,340
Petroleum Pump System Operators, Refinery Operators, and Gaugers 34,860 $97,540
Outdoor Power Equipment and Other Small Engine Mechanics 34,240 $46,560
Excavating and Loading Machine and Dragline Operators, Surface Mining 34,210 $52,550
Forest and Conservation Technicians 31,080 $54,310
Power Plant Operators 30,720 $99,670
Commercial and Industrial Designers 30,250 $79,450
First-Line Supervisors of Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Workers 29,530 $59,330
Septic Tank Servicers and Sewer Pipe Cleaners 29,050 $49,140
Solar Photovoltaic Installers 28,280 $51,860

AI exposure across this cluster

Two published studies estimate how exposed each occupation is to today's AI. The OpenAI "GPTs are GPTs" study rates the share of an occupation's tasks a large language model (with tools) could speed up by half or more; averaged across this cluster it is 29% — 39th percentile of the 14 clusters. The independent Felten/Raj/Seamans AI Occupational Exposure index averages 0.01 here.

Computed across the 83 of 87 occupations in this cluster that carry a published exposure score.

Exposure measures where AI could assist tasks — it is not a prediction that these jobs will be automated. High exposure most often means augmentation (faster work), and many high-exposure occupations are also projected to grow.

Where the work sits

The framework anchors each cluster to one or more NAICS industry sectors — the parts of the economy where this work concentrates.

Education programs that lead here

A sample of the 247 CIP 2020 instructional programs the framework crosswalks to this cluster — the fields of study that prepare people for this work.

  • Acoustics
  • Agricultural and Horticultural Plant Breeding
  • Agriculture, General
  • Agroecology and Sustainable Agriculture
  • Agronomy and Crop Science
  • Analytical Chemistry
  • Anatomy
  • Animal Behavior and Ethology
  • Animal Genetics
  • Animal Physiology
  • Applied Economics
  • Applied Statistics, General
  • Aquatic Biology/Limnology
  • Astronomy
  • Astronomy and Astrophysics, Other
  • Astrophysics
  • Atmospheric Chemistry and Climatology
  • Atmospheric Physics and Dynamics
  • Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, General
  • Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other
  • Atomic/Molecular Physics
  • Behavioral Neuroscience
  • Biochemistry
  • Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Sources for this page

Every figure above traces to a named public dataset and the exact release below — not hand-written opinion. See the full methodology for what each measure does and does not mean.

Data compiled June 3, 2026. Figures are estimates, not advice.

Cite this page
Plain

Singulariki. "Energy & Natural Resources." Singulariki: a source-backed encyclopedia of work. Built from O*NET 30.3; BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) May 2024; Census NAICS 2022; CIP-2020 2020; “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130; AI Occupational Exposure (AIOE) Felten, Raj & Seamans. Accessed June 7, 2026. https://singulariki.com/clusters/energy-natural-resources

APA

Singulariki. (2026). Energy & Natural Resources. Singulariki: a source-backed encyclopedia of work. Retrieved June 7, 2026, from https://singulariki.com/clusters/energy-natural-resources

BibTeX
@misc{singulariki-energy-natural-resources,
  title  = {Energy & Natural Resources},
  author = {{Singulariki}},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {O*NET 30.3; BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) May 2024; Census NAICS 2022; CIP-2020 2020; “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130; AI Occupational Exposure (AIOE) Felten, Raj & Seamans. Accessed June 7, 2026},
  url    = {https://singulariki.com/clusters/energy-natural-resources}
}

Citations name the underlying public dataset releases — they reflect what this page is built from, not just the URL.