Emerging skills and wage gaps in the low-carbon transition | Misato Sato

Misato Sato will present the paper ‘Emerging skills and wage gaps in the low-carbon transition’.

Abstract

As governments worldwide increase their commitments to tackle climate change, low-carbon jobs are expected to grow rapidly. We provide evidence on the characteristics of low-carbon jobs in the US using comprehensive online job posting data between 2010-2019. By accurately identifying low-carbon jobs and comparing them to similar jobs within the same occupation, we show that: i) low-carbon vacancies exhibit higher skill complexity, especially for technical and managerial ones; ii) skill requirements are similar between high- and low-carbon jobs; iii) green reskilling patterns are highly occupation-specific; iv) wages are higher in low-carbon but the green wage premium eroded over time; v) skills complexity pay higher returns, especially in low-carbon jobs. Our analysis makes the case for investments in reskilling as key ingredient of green recovery packages, but also highlight the need to enhance wages and attractiveness of low-carbon jobs.

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