Oregon is the only state where green jobs represented more than 1 percent of employment.
That’s according to the Green Inc. blog at the New York Times website: Study Cites Strong Green Job Growth .
The story cites a Pew Charitable Trusts study The Clean Energy Economy (pdf). (Read the press release here).
The study finds that in Oregon 1.02 percent of jobs are green (read the study for definitions). Maine is the next closest state, with .85 percent.
So that must make green jobs, like, 65% of all Oregon jobs? Heh.
unfortunately, those jobs pay very little. they are green but don’t provide a “livable wage”….
David – The only reference to average wages I saw in the report was the rather huge range of “$21,000 to $111,000.”.
No doubt the vast majority of those jobs are closer to $21k/year end of the salary range.
We do need more green jobs but they also need to pay better. Like David said you can’t live off those green wages
David – that’s nowhere near accurate. I know a lot of people working in the green field of pollution and natural resource protection and salaries there typically start in the $50K range and rise up to >$100K over time.
Very good living wages.
Ben – I can’t vouch for the reliability of the numbers, but they come from page 15 of the report.
The footnote for the factoid:
“U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Occupational Employment Survey, May 2007. Pew’s researchers matched NETS data with the BLS occupational data to estimate the earnings for jobs in the clean energy economy. Annual wages have been calculated by multiplying the hourly mean wage by a “year-round, full-time” hours figure of 2,080 hours; for those occupations where there is not an hourly mean wage published, the annual wage has been directly calculated from the reported survey data.”
yeah goes to say how many jobs oregon has