How Many Jobs Are Being Created in the Green Economy? LinkedIn’s New Report Has The Answers – Earth Day

What Are Green Skills?

These skills can be technical, such as knowledge of renewable energy technologies or waste management, for example engineering, utilities and grid management, but they also extend to more general areas like construction, infrastructure, technology, data management, banking, marketing, manufacturing, communication strategies, and financial services.

For example, in banking, green skills might include assessing environmental risks in lending to new businesses, while in marketing, it could involve understanding and promoting products like geothermal energy. But green skills are increasingly important across all sectors of business.

How Big is the Demand For Green Skills?

Global demand for workers with green skills, or green talent, rose by 11.6% over the last year, whereas the supply of such workers only rose by 5.6%. This continues trends from previous years. As soon as 2030, one in five green jobs could go unfilled, seriously threatening the transition to a green economy. A consequence of this widening skills gap is that people with green skills enjoy a hiring rate that is 54.6% higher than workers overall, bucking the trend of the slowing labor market. In the US, the hiring rate was 80.3% higher.

Clearly, more workers with green skills are needed. EARTHDAY.ORG has been campaigning to support climate education, a critical component of green skilling, in individual nation’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) , under the Paris Agreement. LinkedIn asks that countries invest in workforce development in their NDCs. Many in the business community and in the environmental movement are aligned on this issue.

Which is why we are calling for the global business community to back the teaching of climate education and we are proud to announce that LinkedIn has signed our statement promoting it and green skills training throughout the global education system; see the press release/announcement.

So Which Sectors Need These Green Skilled Workers The Most?

LinkedIn found that renewable energy jobs are growing in every country, averaged over the last eight years, while fossil fuel jobs have generally declined. See the graph below. Five of the ten fastest growing skills were in solar energy.