This paper reviews different methodologies to identify green jobs in cross-country comparable data that are regularly and timely available for EU Member States and assess their usefulness for policy-relevant labour market analysis.

Highlights

• The paper reviews three different methodologies to identify green jobs in data from EU Member States.
• One methodology relies on Eurostat’s environmental accounts data, the other two reflect task-based approaches that combine information from O*NET and ESCO with EU labour force survey data.
• Overall, results suggest a modest growth in green jobs and reveal diverging sectoral, regional, skills-, age- and gender-based patterns.
• The environmental accounts data seem the most precise; but present limitations in their scope for socio-economic analysis.
• Therefore, it seems useful to complement those data with other approaches, including task-based approaches, to gain richer insights, while consistently verifying the robustness of results across different methodologies.

Disclaimer
European Economy Discussion Papers are written by the staff of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs, or by experts working in association with them, to inform discussion on economic policy and to stimulate debate. The views expressed in this document are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of the European Commission. 

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This article contributes to the broader collection of external ESCO publications, showcasing the use of ESCO within various methodologies or its presentation in both European and International contexts. As ESCO becomes increasingly used in applications and research projects across Europe and beyond, it is valuable to collect such sources and share best practices by diverse stakeholders. Therefore, this collection of external publications strengthens the exchange of knowledge within the ESCO community and can contribute to mutual learning in the field of skills, occupations and qualifications among European and international actors. If you are interested in sharing your publication, please write to EMPL-ESCO-SECRETARIAT@ec.europa.eu