Mining and Critical Minerals Workforce Hub

The Mining and Critical Minerals Workforce Hub is a coordinated, data-driven workforce integration platform supporting domestic mineral recovery from coal, fly ash, and acid mine drainage (AMD) across extraction, processing, refining, and advanced manufacturing.

RWFI Home Strategic Priorities Occupation Explorer

System Challenge

Expertise Gaps

Declining metallurgy and limited rare earth elements refining programs

Regional Focus

Appalachia First

Expanding to a national readiness framework

Goal

U.S. Mineral Independence

Expanding talent across the U.S. critical minerals supply chain

RWFI’s Mission

The Regional Workforce Initiative (RWFI) functions not as a training provider, but as a workforce integration platform—delivering analytics, coordination, and tools that enable federal, industry, and educational partners to scale mineral-to-material innovation.

1. Needs and Gaps Analysis
Linking Standard Occupational Classification (SOC)and the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) to scale-up phases

2. Readiness Scans
Skill adjacency and labor availability

3. Online Playbook
Identifying pathways for energy workers and energy careers

Systemic Workforce Challenges

The domestic supply chain faces critical constraints and shifting demographics that require coordinated national workforce planning.

Retirement Wave

More than 220,000 miners (roughly 50% of the workforce) are expected to retire by 2029, creating an urgent need for knowledge transfer and talent pipeline development.

Educational Gap

U.S. mining schools have dropped from 25 to 14 since 1982, graduating only ~200 engineers annually against a continuously expanding national demand.

Skills Modernization Gap

Modern mining increasingly relies on automation, remote operations, advanced sensing, data analytics, and electrified equipment, necessitating an upskilled workforce.

Mining and Critical Minerals 101

These introductory videos provide baseline content.

Strategic Priorities

The top priorities of the RWFI call for expanding advancing workforce capacity across extraction, processing, refining, materials engineering, and advanced manufacturing to support U.S. mineral independence.

1. Comprehensive Workforce Analytics

Developing a quantitative Workforce Needs and Gaps Analysis is crucial to evaluate workforce transferability from multiple energy sectors into processing and alloy development and other components of the critical minerals mining supply chain.

2. Workforce Readiness

Implementing regionally focused Workforce Readiness Scans will begin in Appalachia and expand nationally, examining skill adjacency and scaling potential under multiple tech scenarios.

3. Strategic Workforce Integration

Workforce analysis will be aligned with workforce analysis with federal planning, administrative priorities, and industry needs prioritization processes.

4. Industry and Education Alignment

Catalyzing discussion and communication with mining operators, processors, the defense supply chain, universities, and community colleges will align credential pathways with evolving mineral technologies.

5. Digital Infrastructure

Expanding this Hub and the online Workforce Playbook will provide interactive dashboards, readiness indicators, and transition pathways.

Workforce Needs and Gaps Explorer

This tool connects occupational demand to SOC classifications and addresses the systemic challenge of mapping skill adjacencies for research-, pilot-, and commercial-scale staffing needs.