Michel Serafinelli (University of Essex)

Demand for Green Skills in an Evolving Landscape

Abstract. How does skill demand change in an evolving business landscape? And how do firms react to new information in the context of the green transition? In this paper, we present direct evidence showing how the occurrence of natural disasters (e.g. severe storms, floods, fires) affects the demand for green skills. We argue that these disasters convey new information regarding the dangers of inaction on the environmental transition. Our dataset combines, for the period 2010-2019, information on the universe of federal disaster declarations and data on nearly all jobs posted online in the US, as collected by Glass Technology. Using skill requirements, we create a new measure of green job postings. We document that firms in localities hit by a disaster are five percent more likely to post green vacancies in the period after the disaster. The evidence indicates that new information regarding the dangers of inaction increases the demand for green skills. The impact is larger for firms operating in consumer and initially dirty industries.