Green Jobs not Materializing as Quickly as Anticipated
In spite of the fact that new “cleantech” sectors are having explosive job growth, real jobs are not materializing as quickly as anticipated. Yesterday’s event, Sizing the Clean Economy: A National and Regional Green Jobs Assessment, at the Brookings Institution provided a compelling look at the reality of job growth and the green industry. Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings, states that this industry will only moderately contribute to new jobs for the next three to five years. More innovation and new technology is needed for this industry to really take off and produce a wealth of jobs.
It should be noted “green” or “clean” economy is very hard to define and these jobs cut across many sectors of the economy. For example if you include all jobs that contribute to reducing carbon emissions, job growth was only 3.4% annually between 2003 and 2010. The larger growth has been in younger energy related segments of the green economy such as wind, solar, and smart grid whose jobs are growing at a fast pace, but their base is small. These jobs are not materializing quickly because they require technical training due to the relatively new emergence of the cleantech industry. More investment now in the cleantech industry will help to grown more jobs for the future.
Interestingly, the clean economy currently employs 2.7 million workers. While this may seem like a small number, in fact, it is larger than all the workers employed by the fossil fuels industry. The fastest growing metropolitan area for green jobs is in New York, Northern New Jersey, and Pennsylvania area which produced 152,034 jobs in 2010.
There is a lot of promise in the clean economy and even though it is not expanding as quickly as anticipated. Investing in the clean economy now, however, will pay off in a couple years.
- Clare Giesen's blog
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