A probabilistic and analytical model is presented to assess the direct employment generated by power plants, throughout their lifecycles, from when the fuel is being extracted to the decommissioning stage. To represent the majority of regions and countries around the world, this model provides a global, general and probabilistic vision for all the most common kinds of power plants. Direct job creation is expressed per unit of electricity produced over the plant's lifetime, by means of a normalisation process. Renewables obtained a direct employment generation of around 0.1 to 4 job-years/GWh. On the other hand, the same figure for non-renewable power plants is about 0.1-2.4 job-years/GWh. The results reinforce the idea that some renewable-such as photovoltaic, biomass, mini-hydro and high temperature solar thermal power plants-are still the options with the highest direct employment generation. Nevertheless, this study demonstrates that not all renewables present a high direct employment generation. It also shows that non-renewable alternatives can compete with their renewable counterparts under certain conditions. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.