Green reshuffle: Need a job? Try the growing sustainable market

The market for jobs involving ‘green’ skills has nearly 800m members across the world, with the market now accounting for 13.3 per cent of work talent.

The green job market is shaping up to be more sustainable than non-green jobs.

The market for jobs involving “green” skills across all sectors has nearly 800 million members across the world, now accounting for 13.3 per cent of global work talent on LinkedIn.

The market, according to global online employment company LinkedIn’s Green Skills report, is growing at a pace almost 12.5 times faster than oil and gas jobs in the US, with jobs in the renewables and environment sector to outnumber oil and gas jobs by 2023.

Since 2019, the hiring balance has tipped in favour of green talent, according to the report, with the fastest growing green sectors including ecosystem management, environmental policy and pollution prevention.

The South Australian water solar farm at Happy Valley. Picture: Supplied

But jobs which are traditionally seen as non-green, including fleet managers, data scientists and health workers, are also increasingly becoming green or now include useful green skills, writes LinkedIn chief executive Ryan Roslansky in the report.

According to LinkedIn, green skills are skills which benefit the environment in a sustainable manner; green jobs are those that cannot be performed without green skills; and green talent are employees who posses green skills that can help make traditional jobs more green. Non-green jobs “are those that do not require green skills to be performed,” the report said.

The report notes that while green skills have grown 8 per cent per annum over the past five years, the share of green talent has only grown 6 per cent. “This is a significant missed opportunity for the planet and for workers — one that we can begin to address immediately,” the report said.

Green and greening jobs accounted for 10 per cent of the global workforce in 2021, LinkedIn data suggested.

The fastest growing green jobs over the past five years include sustainability manager which grew 30 per cent, wind turbine technician at 24 per cent, solar consultant at 23 per cent, ecologist at 22 per cent and environmental health and safety specialist 20 per cent.

The fastest growing greening jobs were compliance manager at 19 per cent, facilities manager at 11 per cent and technical sales representative at 8 per cent.

The report found that on LinkedIn, recruiters were increasingly searching for talent with green skills on their profile and members were increasingly adding green skills to their own profiles.

An electrician works on an inverter at Adani Renewables Australia's Rugby Run Solar Farm near Moranbah.

The most in demand green skills include sustainability sought after by 27.6 per cent of employers, remediation at 8.8 per cent, occupational safety at 8.6 per cent, climate at 5.6 per cent, renewable energy at 5.4 per cent, environmental awareness at 4.9 per cent, environment, health and safety at 3.7 per cent, solar energy at 2.6 per cent, corporate social responsibility at 2.5 per cent and recycling at 2.1.

Green skills added to LinkedIn profiles by members include sustainability 12.6 per cent, environmental awareness by 10 per cent, renewable energy at 9.2 per cent, environment health and safety at 5.9 per cent, sustainable development at 5.3 per cent, sustainable design at 5.1 per cent, environmental science at 4.7 per cent, ISO 14001 at 4.2 per cent, environmental management systems at 4.1 per cent and corporate social responsibility at 4.1 per cent.

According the report, only the US was above the global average for green skills across different industries. The UK closely followed meanwhile Australia was only above average in agriculture, construction, corporate services, design, energy and mining, manufacturing, and public admin.

Across the agriculture sector in the Asia pacific, green talent in Australia and Singapore’s dairy industry equally grew 9 per, meanwhile Singapore’s farming industry grew 9.7 per cent, almost three times Australias at 3.8 per cent.

Originally published as Green reshuffle: Need a job? Try the growing sustainable market