Economic & Workforce Briefing

It’s Not Easy Counting Green…Jobs, That Is

Jobs used to come in two collar colors: white and blue. Now, there are green collar jobs. Adding this new collar color is making job counting difficult.

In a radio address several days prior to the November presidential election, now President–elect Barack Obama promised a $150 billion investment to bring jobs and energy security to the U.S. through a new alternative energy economy. Obama said that the investment he outlined will create “five million new green jobs that pay well, can’t be outsourced and help end our dependence on foreign oil.”

Five million jobs? And, new jobs, too? Sounds pretty sweet, especially as unemployment rises, incomes fall, credit is crunched, and consumer spending erodes all around us. We certainly could use a little green love, couldn’t we?

In order to measure something, it is a good idea to know what it is. So, just what is a green job anyway? The quick answer: nobody really knows. A longer, more considered answer would advance public policy in the nascent days of the Obama administration.

The stakes are high, indeed, for obtaining an answer to this question. Many in the U.S. are banking on recapturing our leadership and innovation, stabilizing our economy, and making up for lost manufacturing jobs through evolution of an alternative energy economy.

The cold, sober truth is that the tooth fairy does not drop jobs under our pillows. A fundamental fact of economic life is that lasting, sustainable jobs exist because people produce goods and services that are sold in the market. Green jobs would evolve, in part, because they are required in green businesses.

According to a 2008 report, State of Green Business, by Greener World Media, no common, accepted definition of green business exists. As a result, we do not know the number of green businesses, their sales, or their employment.

Are businesses that produce environmentally preferable products or services classified as green? Or, are any businesses that employ environmentally–friendly practices, such as dry cleaners or print shops, considered green?

Not surprisingly, identifying green jobs is just as problematic as defining green businesses. For example, Raquel Pinderhughes, author of Alternative Urban Futures: Planning for Sustainable Development in Cities throughout the World, believes that green jobs are blue collar jobs in green businesses—that is, manual labor jobs in businesses whose products and services directly improve environmental quality. Among the types of green jobs she identifies are: recycling and reuse; hazardous materials clean-up; building retrofits to increase energy efficiency and conservation; housing deconstruction; solar installation; urban agriculture; and manufacturing of items related to the green economy (e.g., solar panels).

Apollo Alliance, a coalition of industry, labor, and environmental groups describes a green collar job as one that pays “decent wages and benefits that can support a family. It has to be part of a real career path, with upward mobility. And it needs to reduce waste and pollution and benefit the environment." According to this definition, temporary jobs and sweatshop jobs do not qualify as green collar jobs.

Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, believes: “A green job has to do something useful for people, and it has to be helpful to, or at least not damaging to, the environment.”

Van Jones, author of The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems, defines green collar jobs as "good local jobs that pay well, strengthen communities, provide pathways out of poverty, and help solve our environmental problems." Jones notes that many of these jobs are place-based: installing solar panels on a building in Altoona or Williamsport must be done on site and cannot be outsourced to another country.

As inspiring as these definitions might be, they are too vague to guide measurement and projection of green jobs and to evaluate potential investments leading to new job growth in an alternative energy economy. As questioned in the 2008 State of Green Business report, does a procurement manager, whose job entails implementing a company’s environmentally preferable procurement mandate, count as a green job? What about the loading dock laborer who recycles all packaging materials?

With such an indefinite handle on a definition of green jobs, it is, again, not surprising that estimates of the number and kinds of green jobs vary remarkably. On one extreme, a report commissioned by the American Solar Energy Society indicated that the nation had 8.5 million jobs in renewable energy or energy efficient industries. On the other end of the continuum the U.S. Conference of Mayors believes that, as of 2006, there were approximately 750,000 green jobs in the U.S. economy.

The Emerald City is the fictional capital city of the Land of Oz, sitting at the end of the famous yellow brick road, which starts in Munchkin Land. Everyone entering Emerald City must wear green-tinted eyeglasses to protect their eyes from the "brightness and glory" of the city (the official interpretation), but the result is that everything appears green. This was yet another humbug created by the Wizard to confuse and fool. One school of thought believes that Chicago was the inspiration for the Emerald City.

A close, skeptical examination of hopes and proposals for green jobs is required to avoid being handed a humbug—a hoax, gibberish, a fraud—in the name of job creation. Remember ethanol?