Water utilities are facing a workforce succession problem that capital spending cannot fix on its own. Roughly one-third of the U.S. water workforce is eligible to retire within the next decade, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and those departures are landing just as utilities modernize treatment plants, harden systems against cybersecurity threats, and manage aging infrastructure that increasingly requires more sophisticated technical skill to operate. For drinking water and wastewater utilities, losing an experienced operator does not just open a staffing line. It empties out years of system-specific knowledge at precisely the moment operations are getting more complicated, not less.
BLS Projects 10,000 Water Operator Openings a Year Despite Shrinking Employment
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) expects employment of water and wastewater treatment plant and system operators to decline 6% between 2025 and 2035, from 131,000 workers to 123,500, as automation and more advanced control systems reduce the total headcount utilities need. Read on its own, that sounds like shrinking labor demand. It is not. BLS separately projects approximately 10,000 operator openings every year over the same decade, and every one of those openings comes from the need to replace people leaving the occupation, including through retirement. That distinction matters for utility managers: they are not staffing a growing occupation, they are trying to replace experienced people leaving a highly specialized one, and the replacements cannot simply walk into the job. Operators typically need long-term on-the-job training and state licensing, higher license levels are required to independently manage more complex processes, and requirements vary enough across states that an operator moving between them may have to sit for new exams before doing the same work they already knew how to do.
EPA Puts the Median Water Operator's Age at 48, With Few Workers Under 24
EPA's interagency workforce analysis states the median age of the water workforce has been estimated at 48, while only about 10% of workers are younger than 24, and EPA has warned that insufficient overlap between experienced employees and new hires can mean losing institutional knowledge about treatment requirements, equipment behavior, seasonal water-quality conditions and the quirks of individual systems. Those are not interchangeable skills. A newly certified operator can understand treatment chemistry and regulatory requirements without yet knowing why a particular pump behaves differently during peak flows, which section of a distribution system has historically failed during a freeze, or what process change tends to precede a recurring treatment issue. That makes this a succession problem as much as a recruitment one, and waiting until a senior operator files a retirement notice leaves too little runway for that knowledge transfer to happen.
AWWA Says Water Infrastructure Needs Will Top $2.1 Trillion Through 2050
Automation will reduce some labor needs, but it will not eliminate the workforce problem, since BLS itself notes utilities will keep needing skilled workers capable of running increasingly complex controls and treatment systems. EPA has made the same point, with its August workforce roundtable focused not only on retirement but on the technical and scientific capability modern water systems and cybersecurity practices now demand. A utility replacing a retiring operator today is not hiring for the job that existed 20 years ago: treatment technology has changed, digital controls have expanded, cybersecurity has become an operational requirement, and emerging contaminants have added new monitoring and treatment work. That is happening alongside enormous physical infrastructure needs.
The American Water Works Association (AWWA) estimates drinking water infrastructure needs will exceed $2.1 trillion over the next 25 years, requiring a 168% increase in annual capital investment, a gap that is colliding with the winding-down of federal infrastructure funding utilities had built recent budgets around. AWWA CEO David LaFrance described aging infrastructure, new regulation, workforce availability and emerging contaminants as forces "colliding at the same time." Replacing physical assets while losing the people who know how to operate them is its own kind of execution problem, distinct from the pipe-and-pump replacement challenge utilities have spent years planning around.
EPA Opened $10.8 Million in Workforce Grants on August 19
The federal response has picked up pace this summer. EPA held a national workforce roundtable on August 4 and is reviving the Water Workforce Initiative it first launched in 2020, while also developing tools meant to help states and utilities with recruitment, workforce development and retention. On August 19, the agency made $10.8 million available through its Innovative Water Infrastructure Workforce Development Grant Program, funding that can support apprenticeships, internships, education programs, regional workforce partnerships and training for decentralized water workers, with applications due October 5. EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Jess Kramer said the agency is using "over $10 million in new funding" to strengthen the workforce, language that echoes how other skilled trades are drawing on federal and state workforce dollars to address their own succession gaps. The funding will help build a pipeline. It cannot manufacture experience, which is the part of this problem that money alone does not solve.
That is where the operational decision actually changes for utilities. Workforce planning can no longer consist mainly of filling vacancies as they occur. Systems with operators approaching retirement need to know now which certifications could disappear with them, which current employees could move into those roles, and how much supervised operating time those replacements need before they are ready to work unsupervised. Cross-training, apprenticeships, and compensation all matter here, and so does documenting knowledge that currently exists only in the heads of long-tenured employees. The 2025 median wage for water and wastewater operators was $60,020, according to BLS, for jobs that routinely include nights, weekends, rotating shifts and emergency call schedules, which means utilities are competing for technically capable workers while offering conditions that can be less attractive than other skilled trades. The infrastructure sector has grown used to asking whether enough electricians, pipefitters and construction workers exist to build the next generation of projects. Water utilities need to ask an equally pressing question: once the new infrastructure is built, will enough qualified people still be there to run it.
