The impact on employment and human resource development Employment reductions have very often accompanied privatization and restructuring in water, electricity and gas services. They may precede privatization as part of a deregulation or restructuring process to make services more competitive and prepare for their sale or transfer on the open market. Further reductions often take place during and after privatization. Deregulation and restructuring can also occur some time after privatization when, for example, the structure of an industry evolves from one of many smaller private entities to one with just a few large monopolies, as in the United States. Such a process can also entail workforce reductions.
Reports indicating the creation of new jobs in the water, gas and electricity sector are scarce.
And when jobs are created they are usually in new fields and their number is very limited. In France, a small number of new jobs mainly concerned waste treatment and disposal, climate engineering, etc. However, the gas and electricity companies simply bought out other enterprises which offered such services, taking over their employees. The data for the European Union countries provide an overview of employment reductions in selected countries. It shows that there have been job losses across the electricity and gas sectors for most countries which have been more far-reaching in electricity.