page_title: Coal mining in the United States
section_title: Coal production by region
hierarchical_section_title: Coal mining in the United States / Production / Coal production by region
caption_attribution_description: English: Coal production trends in the top 5 US coal states, 1985-2015, data from US Energy Information Administration
context_page_description: Coal mining in the United States is an industry in transition. Production in 2017 was down 33% from the peak production of 1,162.7 million short tons in 2006. Employment of 50,000 coal miners is down from a peak of 883,000 in 1923. Generation of electricity is the largest user of coal, being used to produce 50% of electric power in 2005 and 27% in 2018. The U.S. is a net exporter of coal. U.S. coal exports, for which Europe is the largest customer, peaked in 2012. In 2015, the U.S. exported 7.0 percent of mined coal.
  Coal remains an important factor in the 25 states in which it is mined. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2015 Wyoming, West Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois, and Pennsylvania produced about 639 million short tons representing 71% of total U.S. coal production in the United States.
  In 2015, four publicly traded US coal companies filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, including Patriot Coal Corporation, Walter Energy, and the fourth-largest Alpha Natural Resources. By January 2016, more than 25% of coal production was in bankruptcy in the United States including the top two producers Peabody Energy and Arch Coal.
context_section_description: The three regions producing the largest amount of coal are Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana, the Appalachian Basin and the Illinois Basin. 
  In the United States, coal production declined from 2008 but the decline was unevenly distributed. Production from the largest coal mining-region in the U.S., the Powder River Basin, with most of the coal buried too deeply to be economically accessible, declined 16 percent, the Appalachian Basin declined 32 percent 2008 to 2014 and the Illinois Basin increased its production 39 percent from 2008 to 2014. In 2015, five states—Wyoming, West Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois, and Pennsylvania—produced almost 3/4 of all coal production nationwide. Wyoming produced 375.8 million short tons representing 42% of U. S. coal production, West Virginia produced 95.6 million short tons or 11%, Kentucky was third with 61.4 or 7%, Illinois was fourth with 56.1 or 6% and Pennsylvania was fifth with 50.0 or 6%.
  As of 2014, twenty-five states produced coal. The coal-producing states were, in descending order, with annual production in millions of short tons:
caption: Coal production trends in the top 5 US coal states, 1985–2015, data from US Energy Information Administration
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