Growing Quality Green Jobs

Key Takeaways

1. A more expansive way of thinking about green jobs—analyzing the integration of green skills into occupations across the economy rather than focusing only on traditional green sectors—shows that green economic opportunity is more
   prevalent than commonly thought.
2. All jobs can become greener through the integration of green knowledge and skills, and all green jobs have the potential to become quality green jobs through the integration of job-quality standards.
3. Workforce developers, employers, and policymakers can use the principles of growing quality green jobs to expand economic advancement for people who are underrepresented in green sectors today.

A Focus on Green Skill Integration

Analyzing the growth of green skills shows how a traditional job can transform into a green job, or a job that is at least partly green. JFF and Burning Glass Institute analyzed nearly 200 million online job postings from 2018 to 2022 in the national Lightcast data set to identify these roles.

The report describes three levels of green skill integration, each more extensive than the previous one: additive, blended, and job-changing.

• Jobs at the additive level gain a small subset of new green skills within a broader set of responsibilities but maintain traditional overall roles and functions.
• Jobs at the blended level adopt broader sets of new green functions within existing roles and thus start to evolve.
• At the job-changing level, roles and functions are completely
  changed due to their full integration of green skills.

The Green Transformation Cycle

Analyzing the continued growth of green jobs illuminates how the overall economy is becoming greener—and can become increasingly so. It also identifies occupations at risk of displacement because they are not green. Understanding the green transformation stage of a job enables workforce developers, industry leaders, and policymakers to make educated decisions about whether to invest in training for certain roles or make other interventions.

The report introduces the Green Transformation Cycle to illustrate four stages of green job
transformation: seed, scale, established, and at risk.

About Climate-Resilient Employees for a Sustainable Tomorrow (CREST)

CREST is a five-year, $25 million career preparation and reskilling initiative of the Ares Charitable Foundation (the “Ares Foundation”) that aims to help close the gap between the demand for a skilled workforce for green jobs and the number of people prepared for these opportunities. Working with our partners and local communities, the Ares Foundation can deepen our impact, harness new opportunities, and help create a green, resilient future that benefits generations to come.

Key Partners