The last few months of extreme weather incidents have been a devastating reminder of the damage the climate change crisis is inflicting on communities around the world. This year, world leaders came together to discuss options at gatherings such as the UN’s General Assembly, the World Economic Forum’s Sustainable Impact Development Summit and COP26, where a lot of the discussion focused on accelerating the shift to a green economy.

It’s important to note that green skills are essential to the transition towards a green economy. This poses questions, challenges and opportunities for labour force planning globally.

Over the next decade, we expect to see millions of new jobs created globally due to new climate policies and commitments. The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that 24 million jobs worldwide could be created by the green economy by 2030 alone.

On LinkedIn, we can see that the shift to hiring for the green economy is already underway worldwide. Since 2017, we’ve seen the demand for talent with green skills steadily increase as governments and companies step up their commitments and actions to achieve their climate and sustainability goals.

One of the most notable industry changes we’ve tracked in LinkedIn jobs data is the shift away from oil and gas jobs and the surge in renewables and environment roles. In 2015, the ratio of U.S. oil and gas jobs to renewables and environment jobs was 5:1, but by 2020 this ratio had inched closer to 2:1. At this rate, we expect that renewables and environment could actually outnumber oil and gas in total jobs on our platform by 2023, a major pendulum shift towards green jobs in a relatively short period.

As the need for these greener roles grows, employers are increasingly focused on green skills rather than university degrees. This is partly due to the high demand and the relatively low supply of talent. On our platform we’re seeing scenarios play out where financial investors are recruiting climate scientists without formal training in finance, but who know a lot about how to assess the climate benefits of an investment project. Candidates with green skills are being evaluated differently and setting themselves apart.

Read the full article about growing demand for green jobs by Karin Kimbrough at GreenBiz.