Most OECD countries have set ambitious targets to become carbon neutral by 2050. Progress towards these targets requires a substantial shift in economic activity, which in turn calls for a reallocation of labour and capital, from “high-polluting” sectors, firms, and activities towards more neutral or climate-friendly ones. While the effects of climate change policies on employment are predicted to be modest in aggregate, they will vary significantly across sectors and population groups.
Across the EU, the employment shares of green and high-polluting jobs vary significantly but have not significantly declined or increased between 2011 and 2019.
The average share of green jobs is 8% in the EU, ranging from 5% in Greece to 10% in the United Kingdom and Estonia. The share of high-polluting jobs is around 4%, varying from around 2% in Austria and Portugal to 9% in Czechia and Slovak Republic.
The prevalence of green and high polluting jobs varies significantly by gender, region, and educational attainment level.
Yet moving from unemployment to a green job remains a rare event even in countries enjoying high job-finding rates.
The analysis of the labour market implications of the green transition is generally complicated by the lack of a harmonized cross-country classification of high polluting occupations. The OECD has developed a new harmonized classification, which identifies the high-polluting occupations in each EU country (link to paper). The classification is based on identifying the predominant occupations in each high polluting sector, based on data on air polluting emissions per worker in each country and sector. The use of a harmonized approach facilitates comparisons across countries, while the use of country-specific data allows to consider differences in production technologies or regulations.
Green occupations are defined as those whose content is expected to significantly shift due to the green transition (link to paper, Vona et al., 2018).
Air Emissions Accounts
This dataset describes the emissions to the atmosphere released as a result of production and consumption processes. The productive activities are broken down by economic activity and the household consumption activities are broken down by purpose (transport, heating, and other activities).
