The U.S. Green Building Council predicts that green building will support 7.9 million U.S. jobs and pump $554 billion into the American economy. They found that the green building sector generates $2.6 trillion in annual revenue, employ approximately 14 million people, come from 29 industry sectors and include 46 Fortune 100 companies
This is a round-up of on-the-spot interviews with job seekers who attended the job fair at the Greenbuild Conference that is taking place this week. Attendees were asked what strategies were they using to land a green building job.
Green job boards are popping up all over the internet. I review them regularly and my assessment is this: the chances that you will land a job in sustainability because of something you see on a job board are slim. Very slim. Consider that in more flush times, Americans have a much higher chance to find a job through networking than responding to an ad. Statistics vary, but I have seen anywhere from 60% – 80% quoted as the percentage of jobs found through networking. Now consider that these are difficult times for the American job market and companies are having a hard enough time finding the resources to add jobs to their payroll that we all know and understand, let alone something “new” like sustainability director. In a nutshell, there is not much on these job boards in either quantity or quality to give a job seeker hope.
I see three green job conversations going on right now in the country, which causes confusion for most job seekers. I first must caution to watch out for all of the hype.
Yesterday, Clean Edge, Inc., a clean-tech research and publishing firm, released Clean Tech Job Trends 2009. The report provides an investigation of how clean-tech jobs in the U.S. and globally are changing the face of industry, where the hotbeds of growth exist, and whether current clean-tech salaries are living up to their ‘green-over blue-collar’ promise.
I’ve noticed that most people tend to have a narrow view of green jobs, usually based on what industries or occupations they’re most familiar with. Few people have an inclusive view of green jobs. It reminds me of the story about the blind men who each feel a part of an elephant and then come to believe that they know what an elephant is. But, of course, their interpretations are all limited by not being able to see or feel all the parts of the elephant. Our interpretations and definitions of green jobs seem to have those same limitations.
The world stands to gain 6.9 million jobs by 2030 in the clean energy sector if a strong deal is reached in Copenhagen, according to a report released recently by Greenpeace International and the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC). A switch from coal to renewable electricity generation will not just avoid 10 billion tons of CO2 emissions, but will create 2.7 million more jobs by 2030 than if we continue business as usual. Conversely, the global coal industry – which currently supports about 4.7 million employees worldwide – is likely to contract by more than 1.4 million jobs by 2030, due to rationalization measures in existing coal mines.
For over four years, I’ve monitored and posted positions that were either hard-core green jobs such as energy or environmental engineers, jobs that had a tint of green to them like a carpenter with a PV installer’s license or positions at companies with a strong record of sustainability such as a human resources opening at UTC Power. More often than not, the positions that were advertised did not emphasize the position’s green attributes. However recently, I have noticed that businesses and non-profits too, are now listing positions with some green requirements. I believe this is a result of several factors.
Jim Cassio, author of Green Careers: Choosing Work for a Sustainable Future, has published the Green Careers Resource Guide, and he is offering the ebook for free. It began life as one of Jim Cassio’s research bibliographies. By 2007 it had evolved into a handout for the International Career Development Conference, and now it continues to evolve as a living e-book publication with several updates per year.
