Today is Thursday, December 14, 2023.
The concentration of “green talent” in the workforce — the share of workers who hold a green job or list at least one green skill on their LinkedIn profile — is growing in every one of the 48 countries studied, among which Brazil, Germany, India, Singapore, Portugal, Mexico, Netherlands and United States.
This is one of the findings of a recently released study from LinkedIn, the most relevant business and employment-focused social media platform.
"The Global Green Skills Report 2023 identifies trends at the intersection of the workforce and sustainability, based on the activity of more than 930 million LinkedIn users worldwide. This report includes critical questions that policymakers, business leaders, and others might explore as they seek to develop regulations, programs, and policies that foster green skills development and create pathways for workers to transition into jobs that help green the planet."
Energy and transportation are first and second-largest sources of carbon emissions, respectively, while the finance industry is a critical enabler of such transformation. As such, these three sectors are considered key to meeting the global climate and sustainable targets.
Towards this new economy, green skills are suggested. LinkedIn developed a new green skills taxonomy and metrics to quantify the extent to which different countries , sectors and jobs use these skills. They refer to it as green skills intensity.
Many green skills are on the rise and some are among the fastest growing skills in the economy: sustainable fashion and environmental services have grown by more than 60% in the past recent years.
Its becoming evident the need for green-skilling. According to LinkedIn, around the world, only one in eight workers has one or more green skills and because of that, at the current pace, demand for workers with green skills will surpass supply.
But what are these green skills? Here some examples.
- Climate change (meteorologist, agriculture specialist, policy advisor, biologist)
- Sustainable Design (architect, urban planner)
- Renewable Energy (engineers, project finance analysts)
- Energy Efficiency (engineers, utilities manager)
- Agronomy (commercial technical advisor, sales representatives)
- Erosion Control (public works, construction inspector, civil engineer)
- Environmental Awareness (geographer, safety assistant)
LinkedIn also analysed thousands of jobs and split them into four categories based on their green skill intensity:
- green (solar technician)
- greening (civil engineering)
- greening potential (data analyst)
- not green (nurse)
Based on these four categories, LinkedIn prepared graphs to differentiate regions and sectors. Click here to see these graphs and interact with the data and findings.
Really insightfull information. On top, LinkedIn gives some testimony of professionals that transited from "not green" to "green jobs", such as a 30 years experient "Subsurface Manager, Oil & Gas Operations" that became "Subsurface Manager, Geothermal Operations".
Last but not least, some tips if you are interested in this type of career change. The starting point is that green jobs can be difficult to break into. They tend to require combinations of multiple green skills, which are difficult for those without green experience to acquire. But exactly because of that, here is what LinkedIn recommends:
- STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) skills are at the top of the list, since many green jobs are grounded in science and math fundamentals.
- Several green roles are relatively new and because of that represent an opportunity for workers without prior green experience.
- Gateway roles as stepping stones that give workers the opportunity to acquire the green skills, for example jobs that involve sustainability issues.
Click at the image below to download the 34-pages report. And read several other fantastic and useful findings. Including several graphs comparing the performance of different countries.
Maybe you may also like to recall this post from last August "How to land a job in climate tech".
