Who’s fit for the low-carbon transition? Emerging skills and wage gaps in job ad data

Aurélien Saussay, Misato Sato, Francesco Vona and O’Kane, Layla

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: As governments worldwide increase their commitments to tackling climate change, the number of low-carbon jobs is expected to grow rapidly. Here we provide evidence on the characteristics of low-carbon jobs in the US using comprehensive online job postings data between 2010-2019. By accurately identifying low-carbon jobs and comparing them to similar jobs in the same occupational group, we show that low-carbon jobs differ from high-carbon or generic jobs in a number of important ways. Low-carbon jobs have higher skill requirements across a broad range of skills, especially technical ones. However, the wage premium for low-carbon jobs has declined over time and the geographic overlap between low- and high-carbon jobs is limited. Overall, our findings suggest there will be labour reallocation costs as workers transition into low-carbon activities. This suggests a role for targeted public investments in re-skilling to minimise transitional costs and ensure a workforce fit to deliver a rapid transition.

JEL-codes: J01 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 63 pages
Date: 2022-10-28
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/117253/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Who’s fit for the low-carbon transition? Emerging skills and wage gaps in job and data (2022)
Working Paper: Who’s fit for the low-carbon transition? Emerging skills and wage gaps in job ad data (2022)
Working Paper: Who’s fit for the low-carbon transition? Emerging skills and wage gaps in job and data (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:117253

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