If you have raw skills, you are more likely to get a job. A new report from LinkedIn backs that up, finding that the global hiring rate for skilled workers who can directly combat climate change is 54.6% higher than the overall hiring rate.
In the US, that number is even greater, with an 80% difference in favor of green-skilled workers.
Between 2023 and 2024, the report says, global demand for green talent will grow twice as much as supply. “When we talk to a lot of employers, what we hear is, ‘Hey, we’re struggling to find workers,'” said Efrem Bycer, who works on sustainability relations and labor policy at LinkedIn. The gap is expected to widen. The report suggests that by 2050 we will need at least twice the number of green skilled workers to meet supply.
Certain jobs require different types of green skills. In the US, currently, the fastest growing green skill is “building performance,” or skills related to understanding the energy use and efficiency of buildings. That’s relevant for facility managers, engineers, and others, but it’s not something everyone should learn. The second fastest-growing skill is supply chain responsibility, which is useful for anyone working in supply chains.
In any job, Bycer says, “I think the first place is always where it goes [be having] basic climate change – this is climate change, how it affects the world. This is how it affects my industry. This is how it affects my work.” Then employees can consider what they need to learn to deal with those challenges.
Some universities are beginning to embed sustainability more deeply in their curricula. Bycer cites the example of the Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires, or INSEAD, a France-based business school that revamped its MBA program to make climate and other sustainability issues a central part of every course. Certain retraining programs can also help, as can short-term climate studies. But Bycer also says companies need to do more to help existing workers acquire green skills.
“Companies are making these big climate commitments,” he says. “So how do they work backwards from that to all their employees to see what it looks like? There’s a British energy company, SSE, that did something really cool in their sustainability report: They gave three or four pages to how they’re building their own net-zero workforce. And I think that’s what companies should do. They talk about how they get employees, how they grow existing employees, and how they transfer employees from one part of the company to another.”
Without a major effort, the world will not have the workers needed to decarbonize by mid-century. Doubling the number of green-skilled workers by 2050 is probably an underestimate of what will be needed to meet demand, Bycer said. And what the planet actually needs is more than what corporations have planned. “I’m not sure I would think an employer would want the best indicator of the planet’s demand,” Bycer said.
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