Demand for the skills and talent to do sustainability-related work has grown rapidly in Asia Pacific, but the region is lagging Europe and the United States in how quickly employers are adding green jobs to the workforce.

Asia Pacific has seen 30 percent growth in hiring for green jobs — defined as jobs that cannot be done without sustainability skills — between 2016 and 2021, according to a global study of job searches on business social network LinkedIn, which has 800 million members in 200 countries.

The US has experienced 70 percent growth in green jobs, and Europe 41 percent, over the same five-year period.

Green jobs growth is faster in the region’s high-income countries, Australia, Singapore, and New Zealand. It is slower in China. In India, the share of green hiring has fallen over the past five years.

Asia Pacific’s share of ‘greening jobs’ — those that can be performed without environmental sustainability knowhow, but typically require some green skills — has generally declined over the past five years, with the Covid-19 pandemic slowing recruitment for these roles, LinkedIn’s study found.

The APAC decline follows a global trend that points to the infancy of the transition to a sustainable economy. Green and greening jobs account for 10 percent of hiring globally, and while job postings that require green skills grew at 8 per cent annually over the past five years, the share of green talent — people with the right skills to do a sustainability job — has grown by about 6 percent a year, LinkedIn’s data shows.

Read the full article about green skills by Robin Hicks at Eco-Business.