Green-Collar Jobs: The Numbers

[kristopher]

I just found this site, so I can't vouch for it. Interesting though...
http://www.newwayswiki.org/blog/2008/06/green-collar-jobs-the-numbers/


Green-Collar Jobs: The Numbers
By Alex • Jun 16th, 2008 • Category: Featured

By Heidi Pickman Apollo News Service

The United States is now the largest buyer of wind turbines in the world. Here workers at Glasfiber, a North Dakota maker of turbine blades, complete parts for shipment.

When people talk about green-collar jobs, two questions always pop up. What is it? And how many are there?

The first is easy to answer. You’d think there’d be an easy answer for the second question, too. But there isn’t.
“Green-Collar Jobs in America’s Cities,” the Apollo Alliance’s March 2008 report, defines the term this way: A job qualifies as green-collar if it provides high enough wages and good benefits to support a family, opportunity to advance and build a career, and reduces waste, pollution, and other environmental risks.

The Apollo Alliance also describes a green-collar job as doing the sort of high wage skilled work that can’t be outsourced. Among the green-collar jobs that are gaining in number and popularity are machinists, technicians, service workers, equipment and installation specialists, construction workers, and managers of all kinds.

Job Numbers, Hard to Calculate
Do we know how many green-collar jobs there are? Not exactly.

First, everyone calculates these numbers differently. Some people include indirect jobs and induced jobs. Others only include direct jobs. Should jobs that would be created anyway be included or only new jobs?

Second, data isn’t systematically collected at any kind of macro-level. The government group that assigns industry codes hasn’t gotten around to assigning a code to various clean energy industries such as solar or wind. And some industries such as parts manufacturers make parts that are used in both ‘green’ and ‘non-green’ jobs.

Because the ‘green’ industry is relatively new, most data are either estimates or anecdotal.

Check back with us, too. We are busy conducting research and will periodically update this work.

National Numbers

1. A $300 billion investment in America’s economic and energy future over 10 years would produce 3.3 million jobs and a $1.43 trillion gain in GDP.
2. 932,000 of the jobs are in energy diversity.
3. 900,000 jobs in industries of the future — hybrid cars, energy efficient appliances.
4. 827,000 in high performance buildings
5. 679,000 in infrastructure investment

Source: Apollo Alliance, 2004 published report, New Energy for America

Energy efficiency is more labor intensive than energy generation and thus creates more jobs. Example: For every $1 million invested 21.5 jobs are created by pursuing energy efficiency compared to 11.5 jobs for new natural gas generation...