But China accounted for nearly half of the 6.1 million people employed in coal mining globally last year, according to the International Energy Agency, with more employed by related industries like power. And concentration can be acute. In the province of Shanxi, where more than a third of the country’s coal workforce operate, as many as 350,000 jobs will be lost between this year and 2030, according to a 2024 report by Peking University’s Institute of Energy and the United Nations Development Programme. Once the ripple effect into the wider economy is considered, job losses in related industries in the northern region could surpass 1.5 to 1.7 million by 2030.