Jul 03 2008
Mixed news for job growth in environmental field
With Wall Street officially in a bear market, I was curious to see what effects if any the subprime mortgage mess and other woes have had on the environmental field.
Simply hired, an online job search service and aggregator, provides data on the number of postings over time with specific terms. While this is only as good as the aggregator and doesn’t reflect hiring, I found the results interesting. I looked at four general terms within job postings: sustainability, environmental engineer, environmental scientist, and green building. The first and last terms fit into the growing “green collar jobs” while the middle two are more traditional job areas for environmentally minded folk. What I found interesting is that while those “green collar jobs” are growing (by 47% for “sustainability” and 16% for “green building”), they represent a fraction of jobs in the sector. What is more disconcerting is that the general trend since November of 2006 in posts for environmental engineer and environmental science decreases by by 37% and 42% respectively. The postings for these positions are ten times the number of those with sustainability or green building in them. With that in mind, while “green collar jobs” are growing, those traditional environmental job postings are disappearing at an alarming rate. Where’s a bull when you need one?