As we pointed out in our series of green job white papers, an important facet to understanding the emerging green economy is looking at occupation data. This requires distinguishing between job titles associated with green projects and actual occupation categories. When occupation categories are used the data can be traced back to (1) specific industries through staffing patterns, (2) other occupations through O*NET data, and (3) to specific training programs through a CIP-to-SOC crosswalk.

A good report on the subject comes from the O*NET Resource Center: “Greening of the World of Work.” Here’s a summary:

This report summarizes the recent research to investigate the impact of green economy activities and technologies on occupational requirements in an effort to determine their impact on current O*NET-SOC occupations and to identify new and emerging (N&E) occupations that may be considered as potential candidates for inclusion in the O*NET-SOC system. The report is organized in three sections. Section I describes the occupational implications of the green economy and its associated activities and technologies. Section II focuses on important occupational staffing implications within different sectors of the green economy. Section III describes the methodology and results of this research, including identification of current O*NET-SOC occupations impacted by the green economy and specific green economy N&E occupational candidates.