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As green jobs proliferate, some ask, 'What is a green job?'
A Republican lawmaker said Wednesday that the government needs to define and quantify green jobs. "That's costly," an expert warned.
CLIMATEWIRE | As the Biden administration and Congress push to create green jobs, one question lingers.
What is a "green job"?
The absence of a definition drew sharp comments from a Republican House member Wednesday at a congressional hearing on training people for green jobs as the nation shifts to renewable energy.
"What the hell are we talking about?" Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) said at a Joint Economic Committee hearing.
“What’s the definition of a green job? Would it be nice to actually have at least a common benchmark, whether it be on the right or left?" Schweikert added.
The federal government apparently has lacked an official definition since the Bureau of Labor Statistics stopped publishing data in 2011 on the number of green jobs after Congress cut its budget.
Former BLS Commissioner William Beach, now a fellow at the Economic Policy Innovation Center, told the committee that if Congress wants to create green jobs, "it is crucial that you have that data in front of you" showing employment figures in sectors that address climate change, reduce greenhouse gas emissions or involve similar goals.
"But that's costly," Beach added.
Using the former BLS methodology, Beach calculated that 5.3 million green jobs were available in 2023. But another analysis that Beach cited puts the number at 30.3 million.
The widely varying estimates show the need for an official definition and calculation of green jobs that “expands our understanding of the economy’s move toward” an energy transition, Beach said.
“It should be clearly evident from the range of estimates presented in my testimony that achieving consensus on the magnitude of green jobs at any point in time needs to be led by an official statistical agency,” Beach said in his prepared remarks.
The hearing came a few hours after President Joe Biden launched the American Climate Corps, a presidential initiative that aims to train more than 20,000 young people to work in jobs boosting renewable energy and fighting climate change.
Democrats wanted to include a similar training program in the Inflation Reduction Act, but it was left out of the law Biden signed in August 2022. Advocates say the law has helped establish green jobs, with one report estimating 100,000 jobs were created through the law's subsidies.
