Businesses will need employees with the skills to perform “green jobs” if they intend to meet corporate sustainability goals, but workers can’t do those jobs without learning the applicable skills, which the US workforce is gravely lacking, a new report from LinkedIn found.
LinkedIn’s annual Global Green Skills Report, which compiled data from LinkedIn’s more than 1 billion profiles, found that the talent pool of workers with “green skills” in fields like decarbonization, sustainable procurement, and climate crisis mitigation needs to double.
That’s because the global demand for workers with green skills grew twice as fast as the supply of people with those skills between last year and this year. According to the report, demand for workers with green skills will only continue to grow in the construction, manufacturing, energy, and utilities sectors.
“Every single climate goal is at risk if we don’t have a workforce prepared to deliver the change we urgently need,” Sue Duke, LinkedIn’s VP of public policy and economic graph, said in the report.
So, what should higher-ups at corporations do to increase the green workforce, which in turn will help them meet sustainability targets? Efrem Bycer, LinkedIn’s senior lead manager of economic graph and public policy, told Tech Brew that employers need to develop existing employees’ green skills rather than look for new employees who already have them.
“Every job somehow begins to come in contact with that sustainability target,” Bycer told Tech Brew. “Start with basic climate fluency to help workers understand, ‘This is what climate change is, and then this is our industry’s place in it, our company’s place in it, and your role in it.’”
Keep up with the innovative tech transforming business
Tech Brew keeps business leaders up-to-date on the latest innovations, automation advances, policy shifts, and more, so they can make informed decisions about tech.
Bycer also said that while Gen Z may be eager to help limit the effects of the climate crisis, they don’t currently have the skills to do so.
The report found that 45% of Gen Z workers said that they lack the experience to land a green job, and 40% said they don’t have the applicable skills. What’s more, only one-quarter of Gen Z workers have access to green skills training programs in the US.
To remedy those discrepancies, Bycer said that colleges and universities need to train students in green skills and integrate teaching climate solutions into all fields of study.
“When most young people think about a job in climate, they think it means a job with sustainability in the title, or maybe a job working as a solar installer,” Bycer said. “But part of what our data shows is that green skills show up across a variety of titles—many more titles than we might think.”
Of course, training employees and future members of the workforce doesn’t fall solely on higher education institutions and corporations: Governmental policies could lead the way, too.
So, to incentivize widening the green talent pool, LinkedIn’s report states that widespread green skills training must be incorporated into sustainability targets.
“As governments finalize the climate commitments that will chart the course over the next decade,” Duke said in the report, “they must include explicit investments in giving workers the green skills critical for translating words into action.”