The greening of jobs: Empirical studies on the relationship between environmental sustainability and the labor market

Abstract

"Along the debate about necessary actions for environmental and climate protection, there is an ongoing discussion whether this transition towards environmental sustainability is linked to negative or positive labor market outcomes. So far, however, most studies on the relationship between environmental sustainability and the labor market have used either aggregated statistical data or only survey data. For in-depth analyses, there is a lack of appropriate microdata. This doctoral thesis presents different approaches to fill this gap by introducing new methods to identify green jobs or the greenness of jobs in administrative microdata. Based on innovative data sources, I contribute new insights on the associations between environmental protection and direct labor market outcomes. Besides a comprehensive literature review and the conceptual framework, the thesis presents four empirical studies, examining sector-specific wage differentials in renewable energy value chains, the role of innovation and agglomeration for employment growth in the environmental sector, the measurement of the greenness and greening of jobs, and the labor market outcomes linked to the greenness and greening of jobs. The studies are based on German administrative employment data at micro-level, survey data of the IAB Establishment panel and text-mining results. The empirical strategies applied prove their usefulness to identify and analyze the associations between environmental sustainability and the labor market." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Janser, M. (2019): The greening of jobs: Empirical studies on the relationship between environmental sustainability and the labor market. Bamberg, 213 p. DOI:10.20378/irbo-54822