Labour market transitions and skills investment needs of a green transition - a new approach

he green transition is affecting the entire economy and is leading to significant transformations in some specific sectors, including sectors such as the energy industries, mining and quarrying, construction, manufacturing, or waste management. The ongoing transformations have impacts on the demand for overall labour market, skills, occupations, wages and working conditions. The paper aims at providing evidence on labour market transitions in the context of the shift towards climate neutrality. Based on data from the EU Labour Force Survey we find that in recent years there was a net inflow of workers into all of the ‘transforming sectors’ except for mining and extraction in the EU. In addition, and contrary to expectations, we find that workers in ‘energy-intensive industries’ overall make less transitions towards non-employment (inactivity or unemployment) than those working in other sectors. This may be due to the higher incidence of trade union density in these sectors and also to the fact that these industries are significantly male-dominated hence less affected by transitions into inactivity due to caring responsibilities. While crucial in fostering the transition towards climate neutrality, we find that training and education in some sectors that are key in this context is lagging behind. Our paper also provides novel estimations on the additional amount of workforce needed and the associated training costs from deployment of renewable energy at Member State level in 2030. Our findings show that the additional installations of wind turbines and solar panels to deliver on the EU Green Deal targets would require about 130 000 to 145 000 additional skilled workers in the EU, with associated investment in skills reaching 1.1 to 1.4 billion EUR by 2030. Job creation nonetheless differs across Member States, and those with relatively higher shares of renewable capacity already installed may present lower re-training costs per worker in 2030.