The green economy is generating millions of new jobs — but the workers trained to fill them aren’t keeping pace. According to LinkedIn data, job postings requiring at least one green skill are growing twice as fast as the number of workers who have those skills. That gap has real consequences, not just for the planet, but for workers, businesses, and economies navigating one of the biggest transitions in the history of work.

Efrem Bycer leads workforce and climate policy partnerships at LinkedIn, where he helps policymakers, employers, and workers understand and navigate the major shifts reshaping the world of work. EARTHDAY.ORG Director of Education Bryce Coon — who first connected with Bycer at COP climate conferences — sat down with him to talk about what the green skills gap means for everyday workers, which industries are changing fastest, and why the transition is proving more durable than the politics around it.

Efrem Bycer leads workforce and climate policy partnerships at LinkedIn, where he researches and advises on the intersection of labor markets, climate change, and economic transition. LinkedIn’s annual Green Skills Report tracks how sustainability-related skills are evolving across industries worldwide.

Earth Day 2026 and its theme, Our Power, Our Planet, highlights how people everywhere — from classrooms and local neighborhoods to national institutions — can help drive environmental progress through education, advocacy, and community engagement.

Q: Tell us about your role at LinkedIn and how your work connects to the transition to a greener economy.

My job at LinkedIn is to lead our workforce and climate policy partnerships, and that covers a lot of ground. The way I break it down: I work to help policymakers, employers, and workers understand and navigate the biggest transitions in the world of work — things like AI and climate change. You really can’t talk about one without the other right now. And if you’re working, both of those are showing up in your work in all sorts of interesting ways, especially in the skills you need to do your job.

Q: LinkedIn’s data shows job postings requiring at least one green skill are growing about twice as fast as the number of workers with those skills. What does that “green skills gap” mean for workers and economies around the world?

The world has made a couple of significant commitments — tripling renewable energy production, doubling energy efficiency — and increasingly there’s also a commitment around making sure we have companies and economies that are resilient enough to deal with the impacts of climate change. All of those things require a workforce to get them done.

What we’re seeing is that employers, governments, and companies are investing, and the demand for workers with the skills to do that work is growing rapidly — twice as fast as the supply of workers with those skills. So that puts us, first and foremost, at a question of: can we actually do the things we’ve committed to doing when it comes to climate change?

But there’s also a real economic dimension here. When we look at the LinkedIn hiring rate — basically a measure of how fast people change jobs — workers with green skills or green titles have a hiring rate that is 46.6% higher than the workforce overall. That’s huge. That’s a real, significant difference. So from my perspective, what that says is not only are we at risk of not achieving what we say we need to do for the planet, but we’re leaving serious economic opportunity on the table if we’re not helping workers get those skills.

Q: You’ve said green skills are no longer limited to environmental jobs. What are some of the most surprising industries where they’re already showing up?

One of the things we saw in our research this past year was that for the first time, the majority of green hires had green skills but not necessarily green titles. What that tells us clearly is that green skills are increasingly mainstream — and they’re going mainstream because they help workers do things that companies care about every day.

What do companies care about? Being flexible, being adaptable, especially in a rapidly changing world. Workers with green skills know how to deal with change. Companies also care deeply about resilience, especially in supply chains. And energy costs are going up.

Here are a few examples of jobs where we’ve seen rapid growth in green skills — jobs that maybe don’t immediately strike you as climate-focused. First: supply chain manager. When you think about where most companies have their emissions — their scope three — they’re in the supply chain. So it’s really no surprise that sustainable procurement skills are among the fastest-growing green skills on earth. It comes down to two things: how do you decarbonize the supply chain, and how do you make sure it’s resilient? Think about a company that sources spice crops from thousands of small farmers in parts of the world increasingly at risk of drought and flooding. If you don’t have a resilient supply chain, you have a real business problem. That supply chain manager now has to think about how to build the capacity of those small farmers to use regenerative agriculture and more resilient farming practices. That’s a fundamentally different job than it was just a few years ago, when the focus was getting X amount of crop at Y price by Z date.

Second: software engineering. We’ve seen rapid growth of energy management skills among software engineers, and for a clear reason. There’s a lot of resource intensity in AI. Companies are aware of that, and they know that small increases in code efficiency can have real major impacts — not just for the planet, but for their bottom line, given how much they’re investing in AI infrastructure.

Third: insurance. I live in Southern California, so I think about wildfires a lot. But think about any part of the country, any part of the world, where flood or fire risk is real. Insurance companies think about risk all the time. They’ve had to figure out how to build teams that can effectively assess climate risk. If you have to insure any physical asset, climate risk is simply one of the risks you have to think about now.

Q: For people who don’t view themselves as environmentalists, why should they care about green skills?

First and foremost: workers with these skills have an advantage in the labor market, and the labor market is getting tighter. Hiring is down from a few years ago. If you’re thinking about getting a job or getting your next one, being able to demonstrate that you can think about efficiency, find opportunities in challenging situations, and navigate ambiguity — those are all things we’d call green skills. And it turns out they’re green skills because they have a positive impact on the planet, but they’re also just things that are important to companies overall.

Energy management skills are another example. Finding efficiency, especially on energy, is going to be increasingly important as we go through more electrification and the total cost of energy for a company continues to rise.

Q: Are schools, universities, and training programs adapting fast enough to teach the green skills the job market needs?

The first thing I’d highlight is something you touched on — young people really do have a passion for this work. What we see in our data is that young people want to work on solving the biggest problems they see around them. They want the skills and knowledge to make a serious impact on those challenges, and climate change is definitely one of them.

The question then is whether training providers and education institutions are adapting their curriculum — both for what students are looking for and, perhaps even more importantly, for what employers are actually demanding. And I think the jury is still out on that. Education institutions often lag behind what industry is looking for.

A couple of things they should be doing: first, making sure there are fields of study where people can learn the skills for the new types of jobs being created. LinkedIn data shows that about 20% of the jobs that exist today didn’t exist in 2000 — so there’s a real need for new fields of study. But even more broadly, we’re estimating that by 2030, 85% of jobs are going to see at least a 25% change in the skills they require. That’s a lot of curriculum to update.

Take civil engineering — a career field that’s existed for over a century. A few summers ago in New York, the Third Avenue Bridge between the Bronx and Manhattan couldn’t close all the way because it was so hot that the bridge had expanded beyond what the original designers had accounted for. Those designers were working more than a hundred years ago. A civil engineering program still has to teach you how to build and design a bridge — but now it has to introduce new types of risk, new challenges, possibly new materials, because we have to consider that a piece of infrastructure built today needs to last 100 years under very different climate conditions than what was historically assumed.

Q: Many workers worry about being left behind. What does the data show about whether their skills are transferable to the green economy?

A few ways to answer this. One: you can be in marketing, accounting, or sales — we need those skills in the green economy. Those companies still need to find customers and manage their finances.

Two: workers who currently work in energy — even traditional, fossil fuel-based energy — are energy workers, and that’s a core part of who they are. We need a lot of people to work on energy. There are already strong examples of this. A geothermal company in the United States hired a significant number of people out of the oil and gas industry to help build and operate their facility. The skills transfer more than people assume.

But here’s the broader point: this space is growing rapidly. When you have relatively new types of jobs growing as fast as green jobs are, you can’t rely only on people who’ve done them before. We featured a solar asset management company in our 2024 Green Skills report that kept poaching employees from competitors because the demand was so intense — and that’s not a sustainable way to build a talent pool for an industry. When they broke the job down into its tasks and skills, they found other pockets of untapped talent that could excel at doing that work.

This is part of a broader movement around skills-based hiring — hiring people not for their degree or their most recent job title, but for what they can actually do. In this transition, we’re going to need a lot of that. A lot of people have the passion and interest to work on climate. The question is how we match that passion with the skills they already have to fill the jobs that need to be done.

Q: Your research shows women are underrepresented in green jobs. Why does that gap exist, and what are we losing if we don’t address it?

First and foremost: we are facing one of the biggest challenges on the globe, and if half the global workforce isn’t equally able to participate in solving it, we’re putting the solutions at risk.

Second: there’s a lot of economic opportunity for people with green skills, and if fewer women have those skills, fewer women are going to be able to take advantage of that opportunity. We also know that more of the jobs likely to be displaced by AI are held by women — and a lot of green economy jobs are going to be more AI-resilient. So if women are less likely to be in the green economy, that’s a compounding economic risk.

There’s also a structural challenge. A lot of the jobs in energy, building, and construction are predominantly male-dominated roles that very few women hold to begin with. That’s not going to fix itself. One concrete example of what can help: pairing childcare assistance with apprenticeship programs so that more women are actually able to participate in those pipelines. We need more people working on energy and climate, full stop — and that means actively supporting women into these roles.

Q: When government policy pulls back on climate investment, what happens to green hiring? Does it slow down, or does the private sector pick up the slack?

Companies are looking for certainty. That’s ultimately what drives decision-making, especially for long-term investments in energy infrastructure. Political uncertainty — which we’ve had a lot of recently, with elections around the world — is something businesses generally don’t invest around.

That said, a lot of companies operate globally. What happens in one country may not match what happens in another, and companies may continue to invest in renewables or address climate change because it’s a priority in other markets they care about, even if one or two countries have walked back their climate commitments.

What I can say is that we’ve been tracking the LinkedIn hiring rate, and through at least the first half of 2025, the hiring advantage for workers with green skills remained strong. It decreased slightly, but we don’t yet know if that’s a sustained trend or a response to uncertainty.

What people kept asking me at Climate Week was: is green hiring still a thing, even as the political discourse is pulling back? And my answer is clearly yes. Because companies — regardless of whether they’re publicly sticking to climate commitments — have to get this stuff done anyway. They have to become more resilient because they can see what climate shocks and climate risk can do to a business. They see real opportunities in the energy transition they want to realize. And they want to control costs, and energy efficiency is a core green skill. Maybe they call it something different. Maybe they use different words. But climate is material, and that drives business decisions and informs what kind of workforce these companies need — even if it’s not the headline they’re shouting about.

Q: Looking ahead, what gives you confidence that the transition to a green workforce will continue?

Young people really care about this, and I’m genuinely excited about the number of people who have reached out saying, “I want to work on this — how do I make an impact?” I don’t want to suggest this is only something young people care about — we see all kinds of people motivated by it. But the question of how we help people see themselves in the variety of roles that could use the skills they already have to drive climate impact — that’s where there’s a lot of opportunity.

I’m also encouraged by the fact that a lot of employers are still treating this as a key priority — not just because of public climate commitments, but because they know it matters to their business. And when companies decide something is important to their business, they build decision models around it, again and again.

I’ll come back to that stat from earlier: the majority of green hires today have green skills but not green titles. That tells us this is becoming increasingly embedded across companies — and that’s a good thing. This can’t be something siloed in one part of a business. It has to be a set of capabilities distributed across the entire organization.

Q: For Earth Day 2026, what is LinkedIn doing to mark the moment, and how can initiatives like this help accelerate green skills development worldwide?

Every month, LinkedIn has what we call an “en day” — a day with dedicated programming around a different topic. April is Environment Day at LinkedIn, and it always lines up with Earth Day.

For us, it’s a time when we talk about our own company’s climate commitments around energy, water, and waste, and make sure our employees understand what those commitments are. People want to work at companies that care about this stuff, and that matters. We also do programming at our office locations — environmental cleanups in the community, things like that.

But beyond the single day: we’re always thinking about how we help the broader workforce develop these skills. We unlock LinkedIn Learning content around green skills so people can access it during and around Earth Day. And the reason that matters is that most people are going to learn green skills by seeing how those skills apply to the jobs they already hold — that’s where most people actually put green skills to use. LinkedIn Learning can be really useful for that.

So for us, Earth Day is a moment to step back from the day-to-day, spend some time engaging with the environment around us, and also learn about the skills we can all use to take more climate action — starting right where we are.

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A recent Department of Energy report shows that clean energy jobs grew at more than double the rate of overall employment in the U.S. growing  by 4.2% and signaling that green jobs aren’t just expanding—they’re outpacing almost every other field.

While some people may seem skeptical about the explosion in so-called ‘green’ jobs, numbers don’t lie. Data from LinkedIn’s 2024 Global Green Jobs Report reveals that Americans with sustainability-related skills enjoyed a hiring rate more than 80% higher than those of the average worker, hiring in solar energy is almost twice as much as fossil fuels, and hiring in wind energy is 42% higher.

Considering the growth of green jobs, are we not embracing the clean energy economy?

None of this should be a surprise — as our climate changes, the global economy is changing with it.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) counted a record 16.2 million green jobs in 2023, up from 13.7 million the previous year, reflecting an unprecedented 18% annual rise. China dominates the global landscape, responsible for nearly 7.4 million green jobs — 46% of the world’s total — while nations like the European Union, Brazil, and India are also seeing surges, specifically in solar, wind, and hydropower employment. These figures underscore the scale and speed of the green transition reshaping workforces across the world. 

Here are just 6 of the many new green jobs being created. 

1. Teachers 

Teachers are one of the most important professions in society. Everyone is familiar with what they do, but you might be surprised to learn that even teaching is a green job. Green jobs need students and graduates who have undergone climate education, and teachers are the ones who provide that education.

Teachers can also help build green muscle memory in their students. That means helping their students to learn about the environment so that caring for it becomes second nature to them. So that they make green decisions, whether buying sustainable clothing brands, driving EV’s or saying “no” to plastics. 

For teachers who are interested in teaching their students about the importance of our climate, EARTHDAY.ORG has tons of free educational resources, written and designed by former educators. Our own report Climate-Education-vs-The-Climate-Crisis is a great way to find out why classrooms are so critical in creating a new skilled climate savvy workforce. 

2. Meteorologist

When someone says the word “meteorologist,” you might immediately picture a television  weather forecaster, but most meteorologists work less visibly. Whether in science, research, data collection or something else, there are many career paths for meteorologists. 

Meteorologists are among the most trusted authorities on climate change. As climate-fueled weather disasters get worse, we need meteorologists to tell us when danger is coming. To know what to do when disaster hits, though, we need another group of people: emergency managers.

You will need a Bachelor’s degree in a related field but the effort will pay off as these jobs earn around $80,000 per year on average.

3. Nursing

Nurses are moving to the forefront of the green workforce as climate change accelerates health emergencies worldwide. 

Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is projected to cause an additional 250,000 deaths each year globally from undernutrition, malaria, diarrhea, and heat stress, challenges that nurses will increasingly address through direct care, prevention, and public health education. 

That’s not all. Nurses must also confront climate-enhanced illnesses like dengue and malaria that are spreading into new regions as higher temperatures expand the range of disease-carrying mosquitoes. This could expose an extra 500 million people worldwide to these threats by 2050. Plus floods, wildfires, and hurricanes — all of which are becoming more frequent and severe — means our health care workers are facing new challenges. 

Nurses are in big demand. The US alone has a shortfall of around  78,610 full-time equivalent (FTE) registered nurses (RNs). The cumulative deficit could exceed 500,000 nurses by 2030, supported by official data primarily from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).

4. Solar Panel Installer

Fossil fuels like oil and gas emit about 37.4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide every year, harming the planet and human health as a result. Solar energy is a viable and practical alternative to planet destroying carbon based energy. 

Solar energy emits only 5-10% as much carbon dioxide as fossil fuels, making it much better for the environment. For clarity solar panels themselves do not emit carbon dioxide but emissions occur during the entire lifecycle of a solar panel, primarily in the manufacturing process. This includes raw material extraction, refining of silicon (which requires high heat and energy), manufacturing, transportation, installation, maintenance, and disposal or recycling. 

Solar energy has rapidly evolved into one of the most cost-effective clean energy sources available today. Advances in photovoltaic technology, such as multijunction solar cells, have the potential to boost solar panel efficiency by up to 70% compared to traditional panels, significantly increasing energy output. At the same time solar system prices have fallen by about 70% over the past decade alone, with further reductions of up to 60% expected as adoption grows and manufacturing scales up. Residential solar panels pay for themselves in 7 to 10 years through energy bill savings.  

Solar panel installers — or, if you want to get technical, solar photovoltaic (PV) installers — do just what you’d expect. They install solar panels on buildings and land. This is much more complicated than it might sound: they have to take precise measurements, ensure that solar panels will work in that location, and work with complex wiring and electrical systems. Most of their work is done outdoors.

Still, despite their multifaceted work, there are many ways to become certified as a solar installer. You could become qualified through an online course or through on-the-job training like an apprenticeship or internship. And with a median hourly wage of just under $25, middle-earning PV installers make $51,860 per year.

5. Renewable Energy Technician

Just as solar energy is an increasingly viable source of energy, so are many other kinds of renewable energy, including wind and geothermal. In fact, renewable energy catalyzes job growth: it could create 14 million global jobs by 2030.

PV installers are just a part of the larger category of renewable energy technician. Like PV installers, these positions often involve assessment, installation, and maintenance of renewable energy systems, but they can involve any kind of renewable energy, from wind to hydroelectric to geothermal. Because of the many different kinds of renewable energy, this job type can have various responsibilities based on the specialization. Wind turbine technicians, for example, must often work at heights to access critical components of the turbines.

Work experience is often prioritized, meaning that a high school diploma is often sufficient for one of these jobs. Still, a 2 year degree or certificate in a field related to renewables can make you a much more attractive candidate. Pay will vary depending on one’s specialty. Median wind turbine technicians, for example, earn about $30 per hour, or $62,580 annually.

6. Emergency Manager

With recent tragedies like the flood in Texas, many are realizing the importance of having systems in place to mitigate harm when extreme weather events happens. Emergency managers, disaster relief coordinators, and emergency preparedness coordinators all work to save people and reduce damage.

Emergency managers usually work for the local, state, or federal government. People in these positions create plans, assess readiness, and coordinate resources for when disaster strikes. This job also usually involves applying for financial and technical resources from FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, although new restrictions are hampering FEMA’s ability to help.

These jobs generally require bachelor’s degrees. Pay can range widely depending on location and position, but it follows a similar range to meteorology: from $30,000 to $110,000.

Join the Green Reality

These are just a handful of the green jobs which will continue to increase in prevalence as the climate and our economy changes. All of them are vital. 

But how can we, as individuals, help to ensure that everyone is ready for these changes? For one thing, we can make sure that we are all informed about what climate education entails. More actively, everyone can sign EARTHDAY.ORG’s petition for all countries to commit to climate education.

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Climate change isn’t just reshaping ecosystems; it’s reshaping the workforce. Rising temperatures, extreme weather, and shifting natural systems are forcing workers in diverse industries to adapt, sometimes drastically. While green jobs like solar panel installers and wind turbine technicians are growing, climate change is also directly impacting fields that few people associate with environmental shifts.

In fact, this shift is already influencing hiring trends. In a 2024 report, Linkedin noted that workers with at least one green skill are hired 29% more often than the average job seeker. It is now a necessity to have knowledge of the climate.

Here are five professions already feeling the heat (literally and figuratively) of climate change:

1. Professional Athletes

Extreme weather is no longer just a “game day” inconvenience. It’s becoming a defining challenge for athletes at all levels. Heat waves are forcing professional leagues to reschedule matches, shorten training sessions, and expand hydration breaks. In soccer, an NWSL game had to be postponed due to extreme heat. Similarly, the Australian Open has seen play halted due to dangerous heat indexes. 

Teams worldwide are increasingly being forced to reschedule games to cooler hours, while wildfires and poor air quality in places like California have canceled practices entirely. As climate impacts accelerate, athletes’ safety and performance will increasingly be tied to how the industry adapts to extreme weather events. 

2. Construction Workers

The construction industry is among the most vulnerable to weather extremes. Rising temperatures create unsafe working conditions on rooftops, highways, and other exposed job sites. 

In the US, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA),  a United States federal agency under the Department of Labor, has reported spikes in heat related illnesses among builders, leading to stricter regulations on rest breaks but equally leading to productivity losses exceeding 30%. 

Beyond heat, floods and storms damage infrastructure projects mid-build, costing both time and money. In fact, increased floods from climate change cost the U.S. alone between $179.8 and $496 billion a year. The climate crisis is taking our time, health, and our money. 

3. Farmers and Agricultural Workers

Farmers are already contending with unpredictable growing seasons, prolonged droughts, and more frequent floods. 

In fact, global crop yields are projected to decline significantly in the next decade. A major 2025 study analyzing 12,000 regions worldwide found staple crops like wheat, corn, rice, soybeans, barley, and cassava will suffer yield losses averaging 8% by 2050 and possibly up to 24% by 2100 under high greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, despite farmer’s best adaptation efforts. Also, due to rising temperatures, crops like coffee and cacao are becoming harder to cultivate in traditional regions. How will we survive without chocolate!  

Climbing temperatures also affects livestock. Heat stress occurs when high temperatures and humidity combine to prevent animals from effectively dissipating their body heat, leading to elevated core temperatures that can impair how their body functions.

For dairy cows, extreme heat reduces milk production by up to 10% , with effects lingering for over 10 days afterward. Cooling technologies (e.g., fans, misters) can only mitigate about half of this loss, meaning climate change is likely to cause  long-term declines in dairy productivity. Beef cattle also suffer from heat stress, which lowers how much they eat, resulting in reduced growth of the cattle and diminishes meat quality. 

Farm workers themselves face heat related mortality rates that are 20x higher than those working other occupations. Climate volatility threatens food security and the livelihoods of those who produce it.

4. Pilots and Airline Workers

Even 10,000 feet in the air, you can feel the heat. Rising global temperatures reduce air density, which can make it harder for planes to take off on short runways, particularly in high-altitude airports. 

More frequent extreme storms create safety concerns for both passengers and crew causing flights to increasingly be canceled or rerouted. Now, about 30% of delays are due to the weather. Wildfire smoke also serves as its own hazard, which often blankets major cities. 

Climate change is affecting the winds high up in the sky, which is causing more sudden and bumpy air during flights, – especially over regions like North Atlantic, North America, and East Asia. These bumps, called clear-air turbulence, (CAT) are invisible and pose significant risks to passenger safety and comfort. Scientists warn turbulence duration and intensity could double or triple due to this warming. In response, airlines are exploring technologies like on-board LIDAR to detect turbulence early and improve safety.

5. Healthcare Professionals

Doctors, nurses, and first responders are seeing firsthand how climate change is a public health crisis. Heat waves lead to spikes in emergency room visits for heat stroke, dehydration, and respiratory illnesses. Wildfire smoke exacerbates asthma and heart disease. Diseases like Lyme are spreading into new regions, requiring healthcare workers to prepare for illnesses that were once considered rare in their area. 

The profession is adapting not just to treat climate related illnesses, but also to advocate for preventative public health policies.

A Changing World of Work

From the playing field to the farm, climate change is shaping careers in ways many never anticipated. Jobs once seen as stable are now in flux, and workers must adapt to survive in a warming world by learning and applying green skills to their careers. Supporting these existing professions as they navigate climate disruption is of the utmost importance.

The best way to help all of these professions and our own well being is to tackle climate change. The present Administration at the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA,  is not making that easy! But you can make your voice heard by adding your name to our public comments urging the EPA not to revoke the Endangerment Finding, which gives the agency the authority to regulate pollution.

This article is available for republishing on your website, newsletter, magazine, newspaper, or blog. The accompanying imagery is also cleared for use with attribution. Please ensure that the author’s name and their affiliation with EARTHDAY.ORG are credited. Kindly inform us if you republish so we can acknowledge, tag, or repost your content. You may notify us via email at davies@earthday.org or fielder@earthday.org. Want more articles? Follow us on substack.

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