There is a massive shift underway in the global economy, the world is experiencing an historic transformation in how people work, where they work and even why they work. At LinkedIn, we call this the Great Reshuffle and amid this change we’re facing an urgent need to transition to a green economy to address the threat of climate change. How do we apply what we’ve learnt from this unprecedented moment to power the enormous transition required to meet the climate crisis?
Achieving our collective global climate targets is a monumental task and it is going to take a whole- of-economy effort to make it happen. Ultimately it’ll come down to people — their talent, smarts and ambition — to get us there. The good news is that we are already seeing a shift to green skills and jobs on our platform, which has nearly 800 million members around the world, more than 115 million across the European Union.
The good news is that we are already seeing a shift to green skills and jobs on our platform.
Workers everywhere are acquiring green skills and taking up green jobs. The share of green talent among our membership increased from 9.6 percent in 2015 to 13.3 percent in 2021 — a cumulative growth rate of almost 40 percent. And we’re seeing green skills emerge not only in core sustainability areas like ecosystem management, environmental policy, and pollution prevention, but also in areas not traditionally thought of as green. In fact, the vast majority of green skills are being used in jobs outside the traditional green sphere — jobs like fleet manager, data scientist and health care worker.
The bad news is that we are currently a long way off having the level of skills or green jobs required to meet the EU’s ambitious climate targets and deliver the green transition. Worse still, demand is currently outstripping supply of green talent. While job postings requiring green skills grew at 8 percent annually over the past five years, the share of green talent only grew 6 percent annually in the same period — meaning we are missing out not only on opportunities to help the planet make economic activities more sustainable but also on economic opportunities for workers.
The bad news is that we are currently a long way off having the level of skills or green jobs required.
At LinkedIn, we are leveraging our unique view of the labor market to understand how green skills are being applied in jobs, sectors and countries around the world, where gaps are emerging and what actions we can take to bridge them. Green skills are the building blocks of the green transition and the key to unlocking the human capital that will power it. The European Union can lead by creating more opportunities for those with green skills, upskilling workers who currently lack those skills, and ensuring green skills are hardwired into the skillset of future generations.
And the European Commission is helping lead the way with initiatives like the Sustainability in the Erasmus+ program and the 2022 Year of Youth. These efforts will be instrumental to putting sustainability at the heart of policies to update school curricula, training programs and upskilling initiatives. The next generation needs to be ready for the jobs of tomorrow, but they depend on the right educational and vocational policies being put in place today.
We are leveraging our unique view of the labor market to understand how green skills are being applied in jobs, sectors and countries.
Our Global Green Skills Report shines a light on how and where workers are contributing to the green transition, where gaps are emerging and what policymakers, organizations and individuals can do to accelerate change. It is never easy to get hundreds of nations to move in a common direction, but we believe that doing so is not just our best hope to address the climate crisis, but also our biggest opportunity to power a new, clean economic engine for workers everywhere.
