The coal industry ain't dead, but it's circling the drain.
By the end of 2016, the coal industry employed approximately 50,000 miners.[20] Compared to 260,000 Americans working in the solar industry.[21]
US employment in coal mining peaked in 1923, when there were 863,000 coal miners.[22] Since then, mechanization has greatly improved productivity in coal mining, so that employment has declined at the same time coal production increased. The average number of coal mining employees declined to 50,500 in 2016.[23] This was below the previous low of 70,000 in 2003, and the lowest number of US coal miners in at least 125 years.[24][25]
Because of the sharp declines in the U.S. coal industry, the Harvard Business Review discussed retraining coal workers for solar photovoltaic employment because of the rapid rise in U.S. solar jobs.[26] A recent study indicated that this was technically possible and would account for only 5% of the industrial revenue from a single year to provide coal workers with job security in the energy industry as whole (Wasn't Hillary Clinton pitching this harebrained scheme? 
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