Green Jobs and Growth in the United States: Green Shoots or False Dawn?

Robert Elliott () and Joanne Lindley ()

Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of Birmingham

Abstract: Green growth is increasingly being seen as a means of simultaneously meeting current and future climate change obligations and reducing unemployment. This paper uses detailed industry-level data from the Bureau of Labor Statistic's Green Goods and Services survey to examine how the provision of green goods and services has affected various aspects of the US economy. Our descriptive results reveal that those states and industries that were relatively green in 2010 became even greener in 2011. To investigate further we include green goods and services in a production function. The results show that between 2010 and 2011 industries that have increased their share of green employment have reduced their productivity although this negative correlation with productivity was only for the production of green goods and not for the supply of green services. In further analysis we investigate skill-technology complementarities in the production of green goods and services and show that industries that increased their provision of green goods and services grew more slowly, reduced their expenditure on technology inputs and increased their demand for medium educated workers, whilst simultaneously reducing their demand for low skilled workers.

Keywords: Green Goods and Services; Productivity; Employment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q3 Q4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2014-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gro, nep-lab, nep-lma, nep-pbe and nep-pke
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bir:birmec:14-09

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