Working Towards an Environmentally Sustainable and Equitable Future? New Evidence on Green Jobs from Linked Administrative Data in the UK

Given the urgency to transition to net-zero, there is a need for a robust evidence-base to support an environmentally sustainable and equitable changeover. However, intelligence on green jobs and their impact on different groups is lacking. This study examines the dynamics of green jobs, leveraging a novel linked dataset that combines detailed occupational, industry, demographic and pay information from 2011 to 2018. By employing both cross-sectional and panel estimation techniques, we provide a wide-ranging analysis of employment in green occupations. The results indicate that individuals are more likely to work in green occupations if they are white, male, fulltime, not in a trade union and work for a small or foreign owned business. There is a pay premium for working in green occupations, which reduces gender and ethnic pay gaps. However, conditional on working in a green occupation, gender and ethnic pay gaps persist. This implies that to have a fair and just transition to net-zero, policy interventions are required to address the dual inequality of opportunity and pay.