COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (ICIS)–Employment
in the US chemical industry will continue
growing even while it contends with a wave of
retirements, the consultancy Deloitte said.

CHEM EMPLOYEES NEEDED FOR GROWING
INDUSTRY
The chemical industry
grows at a multiple of GDP. As the global
economy grows, so will the chemical industry,
and that will require companies to hire
employees, said Bob Kumpf, managing director at
Deloitte.

“Society expects us to innovate, whether it’s
emerging technologies, whether it’s
biotechnology, whether it’s all the downstream
applications,” Kumpf said. “This is a growth
sector.”

Kumpf and others at Deloitte discussed a recent
employment study by the consultancy during the
annual meeting of the American Chemistry
Council (ACC).

Even if the nature of growth in the chemical
industry is changing, it is not stopping, he
said. “There is no peak materials in any views
that we have.”

While new technologies like AI and remote work
are changing how people do their jobs, those
technologies are not eliminating the need for
labor.

The following chart summarizes Deloitte’s
forecasts for US employment trends in the oil
and gas (O&G) industry as well as in the
chemicals industry.

Chemical companies will have to manage that
growth in employment amid a wave of
retirements. Deloitte expects that 20% of the
current workforce will retire by 2030, said
Kate Hardin, executive director at Deloitte.

Deloitte broke down management strategies into
four pillars consisting of talent ownership,
composition, capability and mobility.

TALENT OWNERSHIP
Chemical
companies are relying on third-parties to
manage digital upgrades and information
technology services, while maintaining nearly
88% of its workforce as internal.

COMPOSITION
The study
shows that chemical employment will rise in the
following sectors:

  • Site and plant workers
  • Specialists and technicians
  • Business support
  • Customer engagement
  • Leadership

Among site and plant workers in the energy and
chemicals industry, Deloitte expects rising
global demand, regulatory changes and
infrastructure will contribute to rising demand
for these employees.

For specialists and technicians, growth drivers
are occupational health and safety, industrial
engineers and material engineers. The study
forecasts declines in chemical engineers.

In the past, those chemical engineers had left
for jobs in the pharmaceutical and
biotechnology sectors, Hardin said. More
recently, they are going into software
development.

For business support, employment growth will
center around computer occupations, computer
network architecture and training and
development specialties.

Overall, automation, outsourcing and AI will
reduce employment for some job types.

CAPABILITY
Deloitte
expects generative and agentic AI to make
employees more productive. The consultancy
broke down AI’s effects on employment into
human-in-the-loop tasks, human-enabled tasks
and human-exclusive tasks.

For energy and chemical workhours as a whole,
about one-third are expected to be
human-in-the-loop tasks, in which machines and
agentic AI lead the effort.

Another third will be human enabled, under
which humans augment digital technologies.

The rest will be human exclusive, which covers
tasks only people can do.

For some of these human-exclusive tasks, there
could be prolonged vacancies, especially for
occupations such as mechanics, repairers and
vehicle operators, according to the study.
These jobs have high turnover, and chemical
companies will compete with construction and
other industrial sectors for these workers.

MOBILITY
Digitization is
making more skills common among industries and
sectors, giving employees and employers a wider
pool from which to choose. Some chemical jobs
can be remote, but a robust on-site workforce
remains essential for running chemical plants.

WORKFORCE AMONG FEW TOOLS CHEMS HAVE IN
CHALLENGING ENVIRONMENT
Once
more, chemical companies expect 2025 to be
another challenging year in which they will
need to look internally to increase revenue and
profits. The overall economy will provide
little – if any – help.

At the same time, trade policy is changing and
conflicts among nations are growing, all of
which is making it difficult to plan and
forecast demand.

Workforce is one of the few areas chemical
companies can control, and technology changes
in AI and robotics are giving companies more
options to reduce labor costs and increase
productivity.

The ACC Annual Meeting ended on 4 June.