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

Today, EARTHDAY.ORG launched a new initiative specifically urging businesses to support climate change education as a key driver for the green economy. This effort is backed up by a new report from LinkedIn, titled 2024 Global Green Skills Report.

As the world's largest professional business network, LinkedIn's report highlights how teaching green skills is essential not only for addressing environmental challenges but also for fueling economic growth across industries worldwide.

"This is the reality not make believe: if you are looking for a new career or your children are planning theirs, make sure you have green skills on your resume because that is what businesses are looking for and it will make you stand out and be highly employable."

Using real-time data on employment and skills for over a billion users worldwide, LinkedIn's Report arrived at this shocking conclusion: the green skilled workforce is not keeping up with green job growth. In layman's terms, there are not enough skilled workers to go round and industry is desperate for more to fill the millions of new jobs being created.

"Roughly half of jobs in the 2050 green economy will lack qualified candidates if we don't focus on strategic, expansive upskilling."

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.

As the renewable energy industry expands, the market for mass-manufactured technologies like batteries, solar panels, and heat pumps is expected to create close to 14 million manufacturing jobs supporting renewable energy, more than twice as many as exist today. To capture this opportunity, the manufacturing industry needs workers with the right skills. Over the past year, the share of green talent hired into manufacturing increased by 7%.

Globally, 20.6% of construction job postings require green skills. While the construction industry is adding green talent at an annual rate of 2.2%, this growth is insufficient for an industry charged with transitioning to low-carbon concrete, maximizing buildings' energy efficiency, and helping decarbonize the production and transport of materials. In the U.S., the number of workers adding building performance (energy efficiency assessments) skyrocketed to 80 times higher this year than it was in 2023.

White collar green jobs are also growing. Sustainable procurement was the fastest growing skill in the world this year, with 15% more workers adding it to their LinkedIn profiles this year than last year.

"This is a complete win-win situation. The renewable energy sector is growing rapidly, creating millions of new jobs, driving profits. It also happens to mitigate the climate crisis, doesn't pollute so it's better for human health and it ensures that nations that invest in clean energy support national security too. Because it frees them from their dependency on fossil fuel imports and market fluctuations in oil prices. It is a game-changer"

The technology, information, and media industries saw a 60% jump in green job postings in 2024, compared to 2023. Growth in the corporate sustainability and environmental policy category reflects an imperative to take action to meet ambitious climate targets.

Over the past year, the skill of sustainability was among the fastest-growing in the technology industry across many countries, including Brazil (61.9%), India (56.4%), the US (46.9%), and France (41.4%).

Gen Z, Women and Equity

Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2012) rightly views the climate transition as both an existential threat and a promising source of economic opportunity. More than half of Gen Zers (61%) want to work in a green job in the next 5 years, but only one in ten are expected to have relevant skills by 2030 - far less than the proportion that will be needed.

"Gen Z will make up one-third of the workforce by 2030, a key staging post for achieving net zero. But at the current rate of progress, only one in 10 Gen Z workers will have green skills by then."

Gen Z is "perhaps the most promising target for global efforts to double green talent," LinkedIn says, but employers have been slow to give Gen Z the green skills they want, with just 30% of Gen Z workers saying their current employer offers green skills training. Green upskilling is also difficult to come by from other sources. Fewer than half of Gen Z workers (41%) have access to green skills training programs. In the US, this figure drops to 25%.

"We have to skill-up Generation Z now, starting with the teaching of climate education in all schools globally. It doesn't matter what motivates us to do this, be it giving them job security, growing industry or saving the planet, pick your reason - but we should be doing it regardless."

There is a persistent gender gap in the green workforce. Currently, 10% of women have at least one green skill, compared to 17% of men, and the green talent gender gap is widening slightly every year. All this suggests that Gen Z and women merit additional support from the educational system, employers, and government workforce training programs, scholarships etc. to take their place driving the transition to a green economy.

Final Takeaways

LinkedIn's report emphasizes that robust policy initiatives are critical to industry creating green jobs in the first place. Examples include the EU's 2023 carbon tariff, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, and the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S.

Once demand exists, the issue is supplying enough workers with the requisite skills. LinkedIn recommends partnership to include employers, educational institutions, training providers, and workers. It is alarming that existing programs are not producing skilled green workers fast enough to enable a full-speed transition to a green economy. At EARTHDAY>ORG we believe that the integration of climate education across all subjects is key so that every student leaves school or college and understands what is happening to our planet and is fired up by a career in an industry mitigating it in some way.

The fight against climate change is a decades-long economic transformation akin to the digital revolution or even the industrial revolution. This is seen most vividly in the energy industry. The profound economic change requires a consummate shift in education and training systems, like we have seen in other periods of historic change, to prepare all workers for this new future.

"Government policies can heavily influence the green skills mix across the economy. Workers with green skills have better economic prospects. And the green talent pool is growing far too slowly to match the demand growth projected as countries commit to climate action. If we want to double green talent while expanding access to the vast economic opportunities that the green transition brings, the public policy environment must set the stage for comprehensive skills development at the speed and scale to meet this moment now and into the future."

To all the business leaders out there please sign our letter supporting climate education and green skills training throughout the global economy and let's work together to fill the growing need for green skilled workers globally. Feel free to email Ryan directly at [email protected] to find out more.

If you are a town Mayor or sit on your communities local councils or government and you want to find out how you can go renewable and learn from other communities, email [email protected] and find out about The Global Day of Conversation.

We have a lot of free information for educators and students HERE and a brand new primer, How Climate Change Impacts the K-12 Learning Experience and Solutions, outlining the benefits of renewable energy in schools worldwide. Support the EARTHDAY.ORG movement and help us to keep campaigning for clean energy across the globe!