Global green skills report 2023

The scale and urgency of the transformation required to fight climate change has never been more clear. The actions we take over the next decade will determine whether or not our planet is livable for generations to come. The gargantuan challenge of drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions demands a whole-of-economy shift - across industries, roles, and geographical regions. With every challenge comes opportunity: If we take the right approach, we can leverage our efforts on behalf of the environment to catalyze growth throughout the global economy. At LinkedIn, we believe the most promising path forward is through a skills-based approach to greening the global workforce. By breaking down roles into the specific capabilities required to do them, we can develop talent strategies that recognize individuals for the capabilities they possess. And by thinking of climate-related jobs as collections of skills, specifically 'green skills', we can expand the talent pool available to solve the climate crisis. Just as most roles now require digital skills, jobs ranging from procurement specialist to fleet manager to product designer to head chef can be performed in a more sustainable way if workers have green skills.

This report identifies global trends at the intersection of the workforce and sustainability, based on data from a membership base that now exceeds 930 million LinkedIn users worldwide. Our findings reveal that there are pockets of exciting momentum, but that we are still dangerously far from the scale of change that's required. 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 we studied. We also found, however, that the increase in demand for green skills is outpacing the increase in supply, raising the prospect of an imminent green skills shortage. Between 2022 and 2023 alone, the share of green talent in the workforce rose by a median of 12.3 per cent across the 48 countries we examined, while the share of job postings requiring at least one green skill grew nearly twice as quickly - by a median of 22.4 per cent.

Remarkably, our data suggests that green skills, and the jobs that require them, are especially resilient during times of economic uncertainty. Even as overall hiring slowed over the past year, green hiring bucked that trend. While overall hiring slowed globally between February 2022 and February 2023, job postings requiring at least one green skill have grown by a median of 15.2 per cent over the same period. And since March 2020, our data shows, workers with green skills have been hired for new jobs at a higher rate than those without green skills in every single country we studied. Still, we are far from the green skills penetration that we need. Our study reveals that just one in eight workers have green skills. Put another way: Seven in eight workers lack a single green skill, at a time when the future of our planet depends on them.

Accelerating the green transformation, while expanding access to the opportunities it opens up, will require unprecedented levels of cooperation among stakeholders in the public and private sectors. To that end, 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. Just as scientific research continually expands our understanding of climate change, data at the intersection of climate and the workforce can play a critical role in guiding workers, companies, and governments in making strategic decisions and developing targeted interventions to accelerate the transition to a green economy. We have a historic opportunity to save our planet - but to seize it, we need the right human capital.

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