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GREEN JOBS: WHAT THEY ARE, WHAT THEY DO (NOT)

Nature and work are intrinsically connected. This means that the green transition already has – and will continue to have – enormous implications on the way we work, what we learn, and how we live our lives.
The Nordic Region is feeling these changes as countries are hard at work and scaling up energy-efficient and climate-friendly production (Nordic Council of Ministers, 2021).
Nordic Council of Ministers, 2021 (2 June). Time to boost Nordic knowledge to bridge gaps in the labour market.
 Labour markets in the region are being restructured (Young Håkansson, S., et al., 2022),
Young Håkansson, S., Jansson, U., Sand, J., and Simonsson, A., 2022. Towards a sustainable future world of work in the Nordic countries. Nordic Information on Gender.
 and countries are seeing increasing demand for green jobs (OECD, 2023).
Green jobs can offer some, perhaps even many, solutions to help countries meet their net-zero targets (Turns, A., 2020).
Turns, A., 2020 (19 October). What are green jobs – and why are they important? The Guardian.
 Around the world, more and more countries, regions, businesses, employers, trade unions, and workers themselves are showing a growing interest in high-quality employment that also helps support the environment (ILO, UNEP, and IUCN, 2022).
ILO, UNEP, and IUCN, 2022. Decent Work in Nature-based Solutions 2022.
This is indeed promising, but only if these jobs are also occupationally, educationally, and practically within equal reach of all women and men in their diversity.
The ILO’s recent resolution on environmentally sustainable economies and societies for all (ILO, 2023)
 highlights how the promotion of gender equality, social inclusion, and equity is imperative to successfully ensure a just transition. It calls for the formulation, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of gender-responsive and inclusive frameworks – coordinated with economic, social, and environmental policies – by governments and social partners.
THE AMBITION: A GREEN NORDIC REGION
"Together, we will promote a green transition of our societies and work towards carbon neutrality and a sustainable, circular, and bio-based economy."
This means that we will:
Increase knowledge about and promote the transition to a more circular economy and non-toxic cycles. This involves efforts to promote the demand for and supply of solutions for the circular economy. (Objective 3)

What exactly is a green job?

The concept of a green job can be an elusive notion, with different countries, organisations, and researchers taking different approaches and using their own definitions (Janta, B., et al., 2023).
 This makes quantifying and assessing their quality and then turning this into action on both the research and policy levels is a complicated task, both in the Nordic Region and beyond.
What most understand as green jobs, however, are those jobs associated with technology, engineering, and digitalisation that are meant to make society more climate-friendly by developing new solutions (Kilden, 2022).
The two definitions that appear to be most used globally are from the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). Both take a top-down approach that looks at specific sectors and industries in which green jobs can and will be found, but they also stress that these jobs need to be ‘good’ or ‘decent’.
According to the ILO, ‘Green jobs are decent jobs that contribute to preserve or restore the environment, be they in traditional sectors such as manufacturing and construction, or in new, emerging green sectors such as renewable energy and energy efficiency’ (ILO, 2016).
ILO, 2016 (13 April). What is a green job?
Until autumn 2022, no commonly adopted approach existed to define and measure green(er) jobs and skills at international, EU or national levels, with various organisations and governmental agencies formulating and adopting their own definitions and approaches.
The UNEP defines green jobs as ‘work in agriculture, industry, services and administration that contributes to preserving or restoring the quality of the environment’. According to the UNEP, these jobs must be ‘good’ jobs that meet the longstanding demands and decent work goals of the labour movement – including adequate wages, safe conditions, and workers’ rights to organise and to participate in decision-making, without discrimination (UNEP, ILO, IOE, and ITUC, 2008).
To build further on this, organisations such as the OECD have started taking a complementary bottom-up, skills- or task-based approach to measuring and quantifying green jobs which is ‘sector-blind’. By looking at the proportion of ‘green tasks’ or ‘green intensity’ within a given occupation, a more granular way of estimating the share of green jobs is possible, acknowledging that they exist on a spectrum and across various occupational groups, and also that jobs can and often do consist of both green and non-green tasks (OECD, 2023).
 The OECD study is also the first of its kind to estimate the share of green jobs at the local/sub-regional level within countries. The latest estimates from the Nordic countries are presented in the following chapter.
QUANTIFYING GREEN JOBS
The OECD defines green jobs based on a given job’s tasks.
Jobs are classified as green if at least 10% of tasks contribute to environmental objectives such as preserving the environment and reducing emissions.

Assessing the implications of green, not green, and greenish work

Now that governments and social partners are stepping up their commitment to tackle climate change, the need to quantify and characterise the green economy – and green jobs – is becoming more important (Valero, A., et al., 2021).
Valero, A., Li, J., Muller, S., Riom C., Nguyen-Tien, V., and Draca, M., 2021. Are ‘green’ jobs good jobs? How lessons from the experience to-date can inform labour market transitions of the future. London School of Economics and Political Science.
 This is essential in order for the Nordic countries to identify both opportunities and the hurdles they have to jump.
As the transition picks up speed, much remains unknown about the implications for the labour market of the green economic transition and environmental policies (Vandeplas, A., et al., 2022).
Vandeplas, A., Vanyolos, I., Vigani, M., and Vogel, L., 2022. The Possible Implications of the Green Transition for the EU Labour Market: Discussion Paper. European Commission.
 There is, however, strong evidence suggesting that three types of jobs are already, or will be, differently affected. Green jobs – those that aim to reduce the impact of economic activity on the environment (such as waste recycling and R&D in green innovation) – are expected to grow. These represent only a limited number of jobs in the overall labour market ecosystem, however, and, up until now, they have required a higher level of skills, resulting in higher wages (OECD, 2023).
 Brown jobs, on the other hand, are highly polluting activities (within sectors such as mining or manufacturing, for instance). These may be less in demand or phased out. Brown jobs are also more likely to be fully transformed as these sectors try to go green. Most jobs in the labour market – or the ‘lion’s share’ – however, are considered white jobs, with a neutral carbon footprint (Bluedorn J., et al., 2022).
Bluedorn, J., Hansen, N.-J., Noureldin, D., Shibata, I., and Tavares, M.M., 2022. Transitioning to a Greener Labor Market: Cross-Country Evidence from Microdata. International Monetary Fund.
 These jobs are expected to see only moderate change related to the broader greening of labour market activities. Some may also see expanded labour demand because of the green transition, even if they do not involve ‘green tasks’ directly (Vandeplas, A., et al., 2022).
Vandeplas, A., Vanyolos, I., Vigani, M., and Vogel, L., 2022. The Possible Implications of the Green Transition for the EU Labour Market: Discussion Paper. European Commission.
 Put simply, some industries or sectors will expand (green), and some may shrink, disappear, or be forced to change their ways of working (brown), while the vast majority of jobs will remain more or less the same (white).
WHEN GREEN JOBS GO WRONG
Gender, ethnicity, and social class play key roles in where workers are in the world of work hierarchy. UK research on green jobs shows that recycling jobs were unattractive to many workers and were done by male labour migrants – in poor working conditions. So far, the risk of new green jobs becoming an arena for social dumping has not been a major topic in climate policy.

Are green jobs necessarily ‘good’?

All Nordic countries and self-governing territories agree: a green shift is needed to prevent a climate catastrophe (Lander Svendsen, N., et al., 2022).
Lander Svendsen, N., Weber, K., Factor, G., Engelsbak, L.W., and Fischer-Bogason, R., 2022. How climate policies impact gender and vice versa in the Nordic countries. Nordic Council of Ministers.
 Although the world we want – our future – depends on a transition to a carbon- and resource-efficient economy, we also have to acknowledge that, just as not all decent jobs today are green, not all green jobs are necessarily ‘decent’ or ‘good’.
To reach our goals, efforts to minimise the consumption of resources and the path to net-zero emissions should both be conceptualised so that they are complementary with a socially sustainable green transition, and in particular with gender equality (Sand, J., 2023).
 We now know, however, that green investments do not necessarily guarantee equal access to jobs and decent work opportunities for certain groups in society, such as women, young people, and those belonging to an ethnic minority, nor to the services and key resources that might help to effectively position them for job opportunities (UNDP, 2013).
 Knowledge and recognition of complex and intersecting social inequalities, also on the basis of gender, are often missing, which leads to exclusionary effects in the world of work (Abram, S., et al., 2022).
Abram, S., Atkins, E., Dietzel, A., Jenkins, K., Kiamba, L., Kirshner, J., Kreienkamp, J., Parkhill, K., Pegram, T., and Santos Ayllón, L.M., 2022. Just Transition: A whole-systems approach to decarbonisation. Climate Policy.
 The negative impacts of climate change on women’s work and employment means there is an urgent need for an intersectionality lens through which to look at how gender intersects with other characteristics, such as geographic area, indigenous identity, age, and migration, disability, and socio-economic status. Climate change has been described as a magnifying glass that exposes the gender inequalities in the access to and control of resources, and climate change may make these inequalities worse (BRIDGE, 2016).
This also rings true in the Nordic Region, although gender equality is acknowledged as a prerequisite for the green transition (Kilden, 2022).
 Yet, this transition is felt differently by different people, both across and within countries. To date, at the global level, there has been a short supply of systematic data on how environmental measures affect women and men in their diversity differently, and how gender equality may be hampered by these measures. This renders it a challenge to make informed policy decisions (OECD, 2021).
 Research shows that the debate on how climate and gender equality actions interact has also been limited in Denmark, Norway, and Iceland (Lander Svendsen, N., et al., 2022),
Lander Svendsen, N., Weber, K., Factor, G., Engelsbak, L.W., and Fischer-Bogason, R., 2022. How climate policies impact gender and vice versa in the Nordic countries. Nordic Council of Ministers.
 and most climate policies have been lacking in the necessary gender equality insights and areas for action (Lander Svendsen, N., et al., 2022).
Lander Svendsen, N., Weber, K., Factor, G., Engelsbak, L.W., and Fischer-Bogason, R., 2022. How climate policies impact gender and vice versa in the Nordic countries. Nordic Council of Ministers.
At the same time, if we rise to the challenge, we have a golden opportunity today to both design and implement gender-equal solutions that will leave no one behind (Coles, K., et al., 2021).
oles, K., Thim, A., and Harris, S., 2021 (20 May). Gender Equity in the Just Transition and the Shift to Green Jobs. BSR.

HOW NORDIC COUNTRIES APPROACH AND DEFINE GREEN JOBS

The Nordic Region’s diversity extends to its definitions and views of and approaches to the green economy, green growth, and green jobs. Overall, there seems to be a trend towards taking an industry or sectoral lens to green jobs. Except for in Sweden, little sex-disaggregated information is available.
Statistics Denmark has published ‘green national accounts’ (Statistics Denmark, 2023)
Danish Statistics, 2023. Green economy.
 since 2017 that give systematic overviews of the green economy, where the green economy is defined to cover goods and services produced to either protect the environment or save resources. Green jobs are then seen as employment involved in the production of these goods and services (Cedefop, 2019).
 However, the labour-related statistics available within these ‘green national accounts’ are not sex-disaggregated. The 2020 Global Climate Action Strategy (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2020)
 highlights that, for the county to be in the lead, it must show how to ensure that a socially just and cost-effective transition – with new green jobs and opportunities for more people – will not result in job losses, unequal redistribution, or increased inequality.
In Finland there is no one commonly used definition of green jobs (Bruvoll, A., et al., 2012).
Bruvoll, A., Ibenholt, K. (ed.), Ahvenharju, S., Bröckl, M., Martinsen, L., and Zandersen, M., 2012. Measuring green jobs? An evaluation of definitions and statistics for green activities. Nordic Council of Ministers.
 Statistics Finland publishes energy accounts yearly that describe the supply and use of energy in the national economy and between the economy and the environment (Statistics Finland, 2023),
Statistics Finland, 2023. Energy accounts.
 yet this does not contain labour market information disaggregated at the worker level. Statistics Finland also publishes statistics related to environmental goods and services (Statistics Finland, 2022)
 that look at employment across some 110 industries, but this is not disaggregated by sex, age, or county/area. Finland also publishes environmental protection expenditure accounts (Statistics Finland, 2021).
 In the preparation of Finland’s national climate and energy strategy (Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, 2022),
Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, 2022. Carbon neutral Finland 2035 – national climate and energy strategy. Government of Finland.
 the potential for gender and human impact was assessed (see box later in the report), in addition to impact on the environment, national economy, and central government finances and social and regional impact.
Statistics Iceland’s green economy and environment statistics do not include labour force-related statistics (Statistics Iceland, 2022),
Statistics Iceland, 2022. Environment and green economy.
 and within the labour force survey (Statistics Iceland, 2023)
Statistics Iceland, 2023. Labour Force Survey.
 there is no category that obviously relates to green jobs. Interestingly, however, they do showcase skills supply and demand (Statistics Iceland, 2021).
Statistics Iceland, 2021. Skills supply and demand.
 Within the Sovereign Sustainable Financing Framework (Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, 2023),
Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, 2023. Iceland’s Sovereign Sustainable Financing Framework. Government of Iceland.
 there is mention of special projects to facilitate more employment generation and retention capacity should extreme events (e.g. natural disaster, extreme weather events, or public health disasters) occur. The Climate Action Plan does not, however, refer to jobs (Ministry of Climate, 2020).
Ministry of Climate, 2020. Iceland’s 2020 Climate Action Plan. Government of Iceland.
 The climate change knowledge hub for the City of Reykjavík (City of Reykjavík, 2022)
City of Reykjavík, 2022. Future employment. Climate Change Knowledge Hub.
 focuses on the future of work and gender equality and argues for expanding the definition of green jobs to also include care work so as to prevent inequality among social groups.
Statistics Norway’s ‘environmental accounts’ look at environmental protection expenditure in the mining, quarrying, and manufacturing industries, which may include wages, but do not give an overview of employment therein (Statistics Norway, 2022).
Statistics Norway, 2022. Environmental protection expenditure.
 Within the database’s labour statistics, there is a category entitled ‘environmental clean-up’ that looks largely at recycling jobs, with sex-disaggregated data, which is also segregated by county (Statistics Norway, 2023).
Statistics Norway, 2023. Employment, register based.
 Green growth has been used in Norway to describe growth in industries that deliver environment-related products and services, while the term ‘green jobs’ is used for jobs in these industries (ETUC, 2011).
 According to Norway’s green competitiveness report from 2016, green competitiveness means that new and existing occupations have to transform to achieve a low-carbon, resource-efficient future (Norwegian Government, 2016).
 Norway’s competitiveness strategy (Norwegian Government, 2017)
 highlights the need to create new jobs and showcases initiatives with social partners, such as the 2017-2018 campaign for green jobs, which aimed to raise awareness and promote workplace greening actions.
Statistics Sweden collects data on the ‘environmental sector’, which encompasses 11 different sectors, from air and climate and wastewater management to environmental consultants. This includes employment data covering environmental areas, by county and year and disaggregated by sex (Statistics Sweden, 2023).
Statistics Sweden, 2023. Environmental goods and services sector.
 A range of green jobs initiatives have been put into place by the Government, such as an investment of SEK 20 million between 2022 and 2023 to create jobs in nature preservation and forest management for unemployed young people negatively affected by the COVID-19 crisis (Eurofound, 2022).
 Recently, the Government proposed investment of SEK 4 billion for 2024 to support businesses throughout the country that want to change and reduce their emissions, as well as support the expansion of charging infrastructure (Ministry of Climate and Enterprise, 2023).
Ministry of Climate and Enterprise, 2023. Klimatklivet och andra klimatsatsningar stärks 2024 med 4 miljarder kronor (available only in Swedish). Government of Sweden.

SUGGESTIONS: DEFINING GREEN JOBS IN THE NORDIC REGION

  • Analyse currently used approaches to and definitions of green jobs across – and within – Nordic countries to gauge if they are clear and robust and widely accepted by stakeholders and if they may have a gendered impact. This can be done by examining strategies, policies, and action plans, as well as working knowledge and classifications, across governments and other entities, such as social partners, think-tanks, research institutes, and statistical offices. Building an index of occupational greenness that allows for monitoring the progress made by countries, within countries, across sectors, and among workers can also be explored.
  • Critically assess and scale up the availability of statistics on green jobs disaggregated by sex and other socio-demographic factors, such as location, age, educational level, and disability and socio-economic status – across the Nordic countries and at the national and sub-national levels – to increase the knowledge base. This can be done through labour force surveys and statistics as well as through more detailed, task-based datasets, information, and analyses.
Nordic Council of Ministers I www.norden.org/publications I pub@norden.org