Go Green Globe Trot

That’s a question green jobs studies aren’t asking. The answer may be key to helping expand support for green jobs. Interest in green jobs in the United States and worldwide has expanded dramatically in the last 10 years, as evidenced by the many green jobs studies produced during this time, including this one from the Pew Charitable Trusts, which quantifies the growth in the number of what they call “clean energy economy” jobs.

The studies provide an immense and diverse array of data on green jobs, from what states and countries have the most, to what these jobs pay, to some definition of what actually counts as a green job. What every study so far fails to ask, however, is who will hold these jobs. That is, what genders, races, ethnicities, and other demographics will green jobs employ, and in what numbers? A few studies, notably this recent offering, at least try to answer the question for education and income levels, which indirectly provides some data on whether minority communities would benefit substantially from green jobs (they would, the article claims).

A look into the demographics of green jobs provides both discouraging and exciting news for whom these jobs might employ in the future.

Consider, for example, this 2008 study by White and Walsh, which lists the key mid-skill jobs in the U.S. energy efficiency, wind, and biofuels industries. All of the job categories come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics‘ (BLS) widely used labor data. If we match those jobs up with demographic data from the BLS, we can see what percentages of these jobs were held in 2008 by certain demographics (the BLS has data for men/women, white/black/Asian, and Hispanic or Latino ethnicity).

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