The Green Edge Reports Roundup, Feb-24: Part One - General
Continuing with our selection of reports and other publications from this month’s reading list.
Again this month, we’re splitting our reading list into two posts. This one covers general categories. For Sectors, see Part Two.
As usual, you can find all these reports and more in our searchable reports list on The Green Edge Data Portal.
֎ Starting this month we’re adding this new notation against reports we feel are particularly worth a look.
Skills
֎Shifting Skills, Moving Targets, and Remaking the Workforce
Boston Consulting Group and Burning Glass Institute, May 2022.
An insightful report tracking the major trends impacting work (digital skills for non-digital occupations, soft skills in digital occupations, visual communications, and social media skills) and looking at the scale of disruption at the occupation level. A helpful list is provided of over 600 occupations (pages 28-38) with a score on the index of disruption. We have argued for some time about the rate of disruption and nature of the lifecycle of skills (half-life). It is in this context green skills are being developed and acquired across the economy, and the major trends need to be recognised when viewing how occupations are changing.
֎Showing the path to green jobs at College and University: A guide for careers and student supports staff
EAUC, Scotland, December 2023.
A helpful and straightforward guide for careers advisors. While it is aimed at Colleges and Universities, it is equally relevant to schools, and would fit well with anyone following the Gatsby Benchmark approach to careers guidance and advice. It fills a large gap in knowledge and understanding of those seeking to make their first work career step, and opens up the opportunities to rapidly growing green economy offers. We need to see this guide updated on a rolling basis as the economy moves towards net zero and circularity.
֎Human Capabilities for Sustainability
Enginuity and The Green Edge, January 2024.
This is one our pieces written with Enginuity, which we hope our readers find is worth listing as we think there is a need to work towards a competency framework for sustainability. We take a look at several working frameworks to see where a unified, shared one could emerge. A start, and we’d like to have your comments and observations. If this is of interest you will find the recent Canada West Foundation report of use too.
Spelling it out, making it count: Functional Skills Qualifications and their place in vocational training
AELP sponsored by the Edge Foundation and the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, January 2024.
Mastering core functional skills and gaining qualifications in Maths and English are critical for anyone wanting to enter and progress in the workforce, and take advantage of the opportunities of the greening of the economy and the move towards full sustainability.
How is new technology changing job design?
IZA World of Labor, August 2022.
A good updated note, building on work at MIT covering the 1940-2018 period and showing the shifts that are happening across occupational groups, teasing out the implications for education and the core curriculum outcomes. Would be good to see this analysis to be broadened into circular, green, and sustainability skills and competences.
No longer optional: employer demand for digital skills
Burning Glass for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sports, June 2019.
Understanding how skills are taken up across occupations is important to shape local and national policies. This piece of work finds that 2/3rds of UK SOC occupations have digital skills as an essential entry requirement. Digital skills are split down into eight clusters: productivity software (seen as baseline across almost all occupations), software and programming, networking systems, data analysis, digital marketing, digital design, customer relationship management software, and machining and manufacturing technology. The last seven of these groups are occupation- and sector-specific along with location differences. We think we could well be seeing similar reports for the greening of the economy as we move towards net zero.
SME Skills Horizon 2024
Department for Education in partnership with the British Chamber of Commerce, February 2024.
Takes the temperature of skills across a large sample of SME but does not mention net zero, nor green skills which could be added perhaps next year.
Boosting routes into industry: an employers’ perspective
Cross-Industry Construction Apprenticeship Task Force and NOCN Group, January 2024.
Timely reminder and a set of practical recommendations to ensure the construction workforce can adjust to changing demands (including net zero). We need to keep in mind the construction industry’s scale: £216bn output per annum which is around 9% of GDP. What would be useful is to contrast the formal routes of entry and progression with how flows operate across an industry which is made up of thousands of SMEs (nearly 900,000 at the latest count).
Labour Market
֎Towards a National Jobs and Skills Roadmap: Annual Jobs and Skills Report 2023
Australia Government and Jobs & Skills Australia, October 2023.
We always find looking outside the UK for good practice and ideas is useful, and this report from Australia is useful throughout, and in particular Chapter 5: Meeting the skill needs of the clean energy transformation which is based on more detailed work (Link). Of particular interest to us is the identification of 38 critical occupations across all clean energy segments that will need to be developed and grown to support the transition under all scenarios (e.g. electricians and electrical engineers recur across multiple segments alongside metal fitters and machinists, technician roles, engineering roles – electrical engineers, industrial, mechanical and production engineers – and managerial roles e.g. production managers and construction managers). Also highlighted are three main pathways emerging in FE and HE: broader, based qualifications; top-ups and electives; and new, specialised qualifications. Well worth a look and in particular the various appendices.
֎The Clean Energy Generation: Workforce Needs for a Net Zero Economy
Australian Government and Jobs & Skills Australia, October 2023.
Packed full of useful information on the clean energy transition and concludes: “many of the skills needed to decarbonise already exist in our economy.” There are 38 critical occupations identified plus 11 emerging/new occupations. A key chapter for us is Chapter 6: Emerging and Transforming Sectors. Like in the UK there is a greatly increased demand for electricians (require an additional 32,000 by 2030) and a massive increase in the number of construction and engineering workers (c2mn by 2050). It also notes the significance of global competition for clean energy skills, and Australia will need to match-up to other countries to attract and retain staff and have a pro-active migration strategy.
֎Old Skills, New Skills: What is changing in the labour market?
Institute for the Future of Work, February 2024.
Using Adzuma data (much like the Lightcast data sets) this study views 2016 and 2022, and looks at skills churn and atrophy. Perhaps not surprisingly, the high churn occupations are generally in the higher technical ones (professional and associate) e.g. in IT, in engineering, in design etc. What does surprise us is the lack of sustainability coming through.
National Institute UK Economic Outlook: Winter 2024
NIESR, February 2024.
Our interest here is twofold: developments in the labour market (just look at Figure 1:24 Number of organisations registered to sponsor work visas, page 43) where the number of organisations registered has risen from c30,000 (2011-2021) increasing to c55,000 (in 2022) and c80,000 (in 2023) which indicates major issues in the labour market, and possibly attracting green skills qualified staff; and, the piece on levelling-up (page 59) where we need to track changes in NVQ Level 3+ qualifications which could be materially impacted by the growth of the green economy. Round 3 of Levelling-up funding and its tracking might show some signs of progress across the skills and other three core measures.
Comparing policies, participation and inequalities across UK post-16 education and training
SKOPE, Oxford; School of Education, University of Adelaide; and the EPI, February 2024.
Covers three key areas: convergence v divergence; participation and pathways; and outcomes. For us, the interest here is having a robust, simple, and effective post-16 education and training system across the whole of the UK. Sadly, there is divergence on policies across the countries that make up the UK, and participation is poor in some countries (NEETs in Wales). What the collective impact of having a lack of policy coherence on the transition to net zero is not clear, but it can only complicate matters for those employers operating across the UK e.g. renewable generators in wind.
We’ve only just begun: Action to improve young people’s mental health, education and employment
Resolution Foundation, February 2024.
Two thoughts struck us in reading this report: first, the true value of managing mental health in its widest sense; and second, the scale of the impact on the labour market by taking out many young people from work which over time means their opportunity to engage is reduced. From a net zero point of view, anything which reduces the supply of skills will impact the UK’s ability to manage the transition to net zero.
Talent Disrupted: College Graduates, Underemployment, and the Way Forward
Burning Glass Institute and Strada Institute for the Future of Work, February 2024.
How people enter work is so important - this report provides the data that backs up that view. A key document for anyone involved in careers advice to graduates. It would be good to see this work repeated for the UK to see if the findings are repeated here.
Skills-Based Hiring: The long road from pronouncements to practice
Burning Glass Institute, February 2024.
The momentum behind skills-based hiring is growing but still relatively small, although there is a significant group of skills-based hiring leaders. Given the need to grow workforces to install, operate and maintain clean tech across the economy, there is going to be a need to adopt and develop recruitment practices that recognise capabilities and skills beyond just qualifications. In the UK, given the current political objectives to reduce immigration, the policies around employment support (aiding people to move from employment withdrawal back into work) and recruit based on potential and capability as people enter new careers and occupations to build a truly sustainable economy.
֎Enabling green choices for net zero
POST Note 714, February 2024.
As we hear more about all jobs being green jobs, so is the case for us all to be green citizens. This POST note covers this ground in its usual thorough and efficient way. The interplay between green engagement and green skills and careers is an interesting one as understanding grows.
Job Creation Estimates Through Proposed Economic Stimulus Measures
PERI Report, University of Massachusetts, September 2020.
Helpful collation of data from multiple sources covering four areas: infrastructure; clean energy; agriculture and land restoration; and care economy, public health, and postal service. Would be useful to have this work updated and covering multiple countries as the multipliers will have changed over time.
WMCA Employment and Skills Strategy 2024-2027
West Midlands Combined Authority, February 2024.
As the combined authorities with mayors develop more, they are taking an increasingly important role in developing both employment and skills strategies, and impacting productivity and growth. This plan for the West Midlands is built around four pillars and should provide the base for long term benefits across all occupations (which includes the net zero and sustainability ones). If you are interested in this report, it is worth looking at local skills reports too.
Changing course(s): A new vision for employer investment in skills and the apprenticeship levy
EDSK, September 2022.
A good discussion built around shifting three principles that underpin the current apprenticeship system in the UK. The shifts called for are: employer-led moving to employer responsive system; moving employers being largely passive to being pro-active co-producers of skilled people; and, moving from funding “just” apprenticeships and “big” qualifications to funding skills more widely and developing appropriate qualifications. This all makes good sense along with the call for two clear funding streams and devolving of the deployment of the finds (a local skills fund). We know other well-placed policy influencers are pushing for a reduction in the threshold for paying the levy, reducing the funding of apprenticeships for older workers, and withdrawing apprenticeships for oversupplied occupations.
Summary of visa cost analysis 2021
The Royal Society, 2022.
Two messages hit us in looking at this analysis: first, despite high costs of visas in the UK, the flow of talent continues (high when compared to other developed economies); and, secondly, how might visa costs impact the transition to net zero. This analysis does not cover the sectoral impact but it would be worth doing as a part of the Net Zero Workforce Plan.
2023 Global Report on ESG metrics in Executive Incentive Plans
WTW, January 2024.
ESG metrics for executive incentives is now very widespread: 93% of cases in Europe, and 76% in the USA. There should be a link between ESG metrics for executives and corporate progress towards net zero, and it would be good to see this side of the equation i.e. while payouts have been made to executives on their ESG targets, have their corporation made progress too.
The Missing Link: Aligning Executive Compensation with Climate Action
Galvanize Climate Solution in collaboration with Stanford Business School, December 2023.
In a similar vein as the report above, this one looks at the metrics being used e.g. carbon footprint, energy efficiency, waste reduction, emissions and chemical containment, sustainable sourcing, and water consumption, and draws on the experience of Nike, Mars, and Schneider Electric. Can only be good if senior executive are being rewarded for their corporations’ moves towards net zero.
Skills and Health Inequalities in London
Institute of Health Equality, UCL, 2023.
While this report looks at the direct links between skills acquisition and health, our interest lies in the accessing of disadvantaged people to skills development and participation in the labour market. There are messages in this report we think are relevant to the development of the net zero workforce manpower plan if we are serious about ensuring green jobs are opportunities for everyone across society.
AI could actually help rebuild the middle class
David Autor in Noema, February 2024.
A simple, powerful message: AI is inevitable and will grow but there is a huge range of choices when it comes to the impact on work content and job numbers. Our green perspective here is threefold: there is a competition for staff and AI is attracting interest and applications which might impact green opportunities; progress with the transition to net zero is dependent on progress with AI to handle the options and complexities; and, the drafting of the net zero workforce manpower plan needs to take into account the interplay of labour supply through immigration and work reduction driven by some applications of AI. We would also suggest that the line taken by Autor would be recognised by those who think (like we do) that job design should be top down rather bottom-up. A longer version of this paper was also published by NBER.
Maine Climate Jobs Report
Climate Initiative, Worker Institute, Cornell University, March 2022.
An annual stock take of progress and future actions across key sectors, noting local reports, and in particular, the number of jobs and their type. Would be worth asking all LSIP or similar authors and owners to produce such a report each year for UK-wide collation.
Building Good Local Jobs on Utility-Scale Clean Energy Projects in Wisconsin
Midwest Economic Policy Institute, March 2022
Regional (state level in this case) studies of clean energy jobs are always interesting and useful as they inform the estimation of new, additional jobs. Here we find 34,000 jobs will be created by 2050. The ratio that stuck with us was: every $1bn investment in wind and solar generates 2,700 jobs which includes 400 construction and operational jobs.
Hidden Sector, Hidden Talent: Mapping Canada’s Career Development Sector. 2024 Evidence Base
Challenge Factory for CCDF and CERIC, 2024.
We track and read many items produced by the Canadian careers service, and this report seeks “just” to map the career sector, comes to the conclusion there are 40-60,000 core career professionals across over 1,635 organisations. Our interest here is what can we learn which might help the UK’s careers service, and in particular the shaping the flows of people into new, green career options. One for the Careers and Enterprise Company, and the Department for Education to consider.
Implementing climate change education in schools: constructive hope in action
Climate Adapted Pathways for Education (CAPE) and Leeds Trinity University, January 2024.
The message is growing and getting a wider audience in the push to change schools’ curriculum to include climate change and sustainability. This report builds on this growing momentum with a series of case studies. We have reported before that there is a much greater need to ensure the curriculum is updated and extended, and careers advice matches the opportunities emerging across the UK labour market.
DfE Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy: Evaluation Framework
Department for Education, January 2024.
Covers five action areas: climate education, education estate, international, green skills and economy (which becomes green skills and careers later), and operations and supply chain. On the green skills and careers front the DfE highlights bootcamps, HTQ, T-Levels, green apprenticeships, and Institutes of Technology. It will be interesting to see how the framework is used in the future, and helps shape the development of more effective actions both nationally and locally.
The role of the education sector in shaping a sustainable future
Journal of Biological Science, Vol 58, February 2024.
Useful short article on the three roles for education: modelling action, providing a voice, and driving action. Might be useful for those thinking about wider engagement of the community in the transition to net zero.
Competition and market power in UK labour markets
Competition and Markets Authority, January 2024.
The labour market within which green skills are emerging is being shaped by a few major forces coming from working from home and hybrid working, gig economy, restrictive covenants, and pay-setting policies. This report does not pick up on sector impacts, like the transition to net zero and the development of green jobs, but these forces cutting across all workplaces must impact the greening labour market.
The Resolution Foundation Labour Market Outlook Quarterly Briefing Q1 2024
Resolution Foundation, January 2024.
The overall health (in every sense) of the labour market is critical going forward giving the growing demands coming from net zero, the care and health sector, digitalisation of engineering and manufacturing, etc. Here ill health and employment activity rates are examined with some major divergences occurring.
Data on Occupation Mobility: Unpacking worker movements
Jobs and Skills Australia, January 2024.
A short, informative document opening up a key issue: occupation mobility. Across the transition to net zero, a series of upskilling and reskilling waves of change are expected, and understanding how people change occupations is important. One message we take from this study is simple: escaping occupations is not straight forward, which begs questions about education and training support at work, and out of work.
Working without borders: The promise and peril of online gig work
International Bank for Reconstruction and the World Bank, 2023.
Our interest here is in the size of the gig economy (4.4-12.5% of the global labour force) and primarily in the role of gig jobs in enabling skills acquisition and progression within the labour market, and possibly as a way of growing the green workforce. In this detailed report we see that the largest share of gig workers are relatively low in education terms but do recognise skills acquisition (most notably digital ones). It would be good to see a follow-up survey of gig workers and their progression into new roles and occupations.
Levelling-Up and Regional Development
֎The UK’s Net Zero Economy
CBI Economics for ECIU, February 2024.
This is great stock take for the UK’s green economy, showing it grew 9% in 2023 and is now 3.8% of the UK economy, employing 3% of the workforce. An important report as it also goes down to constituency level and shows the hotspots for the green economy. It would be good to combine these data with the LSIPs and other local skills and energy plans. This report backs-up the CBI’s Going for Green: The UK's Net Zero Growth Opportunity report (July 2023).
֎Cities Outlook 2024
Centre for Cities, January 2024.
Great annual check on progress over the last decade and more, and salutary reminder of the need to have a very, very long-term perspective on levelling-up (see the chart on page 28, a timeline of sub-national economic policies since 1965). Of direct use for many is the city level data (for 63 cities) and it would be even better if it could be combined with the data from the work of UK Engineering and Royal Academy of Engineering on the spatial impact of engineering driving local economies.
֎Analytical Report Identifying and Describing UK Innovation Clusters
Cambridge Econometrics with Data City and Innovation and Research Caucus for the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology, February 2024.
Identifying four cluster types and using several large datasets from Data City (RTIC), UKRI collaborators and applicants data set etc. the analysis identifies 3,443 innovation clusters (10 firms or more). Our interest is both in the general spatial patterns, but also the figure on page 31 (No 3.7) which picks out the sector collaborations of the RTIC Net Zero Sector and which includes clean tech, electricity, logistics and freight, mining and extraction, engineering, energy generation and water and waste. What we now need to know is the health of the net zero cluster in terms of inputs (skills, capital) and outputs (impact on delivering net zero, and gaining exports). Perhaps the next report could add these elements to its thinking and analysis. Again, it is worth looking at recent analysis in the USA: America's Tech Hubs Are Multiplying by the Burning Glass Institute (January 2024).
֎Our journey to net zero: understanding household and community participation in the UK’s transition to a greener future
Universities of York and Leeds, Trinity College Dublin and the Young Foundation, February 2024.
This report brings two really important items to our thinking: one is the excellent infographic which captures the person-centred, place-based approach to supporting household and community capability for net zero (really important and tells us the importance of local government in the transition to net zero); and the other is the notion of transition poverty (like fuel poverty) which is found to impact 40% of households in the UK. Again, this tells us of the need for engagement and support to deliver an equitable net zero transition.
The Good Work Time Series 2023
Institute for the Future of Work and Imperial College London, January 2023.
These time series have now been running since 2019 and we are due the 2024 update. A useful way of viewing progress and potential at local authority levels, and in many ways, tracking the health of the local labour market. For us the development of the green economy and its associated jobs have a role here to drive “good jobs”.
Political Devolution in England
Cavendish Consulting, February 2024.
A quick guide using a set of good graphics covering the combined authorities across England. 2024 is an important year given the number of mayoral roles up for election.
Climate for Change: A Climate Jobs Roadmap for New York
Climate Initiative, Worker Institute, Cornell University, February 2022.
It’s always interesting to look at what other major cities are doing to roadmap their future jobs. This one for New York looks across a number of major sectors (buildings, energy, transportation) and takes a deeper dive into workforce development. Of particular interest are the job estimates based on the levels of capital investment. It would be good to see these estimates tested in a European setting, and how they might have changed over time.