Research brief

Assessing the Size of the Green Economy: Global Evidence from Harmonized Labour Force Surveys

This new ILO brief introduces a globally harmonized method to measure green employment and applies it to ILO data from 134 countries, revealing key income, gender and age patterns in the green transition.

Key points

  • This brief applies an ILO green taxonomy developed in Delaporte, Escudero and Adamczyk (2025) to ISCO-08 occupational task descriptions, using natural language processing. Based on these occupational categorizations, the brief subsequently measures green employment in 134 countries from the ILO’s global collection of harmonized labour force surveys (ILOSTAT).
  • The brief proposes using ISCO standardized task descriptions and labour force survey data, on the one hand, and vacancy data, on the other hand, as complementary sources to study green employment: The former provide an internationally comparable baseline for long-term structural analysis representative of countries’ labour forces. The latter are uniquely suited to capturing emerging, more detailed and country-specific trends.
  • Globally, an estimated 31.7 per cent of employment is in occupations that contain green tasks. In more detail, 12.1 per cent is categorized as “darker green,” relying more intensely on green tasks, while 19.6 per cent is considered “lighter green.”
  • The analysis reveals a "green employment divide" linked to national income levels, with green employment ranging from an estimated 23.1 per cent in low-income countries to 35.7 per cent in high-income countries. Green occupations are male dominated, with men accounting for over 70 per cent of employment in these occupations, compared to a male employment share of 54.0 per cent in non-green occupations. Moreover, workers aged 15 to 24 tend to be underrepresented in green occupations.

Additional details

Author(s)

  • Willian Adamczyk
  • Isaure Delaporte
  • Verónica Escudero
  • Hannah Liepmann

References