Labour Market Insights on the Clean Technology (Cleantech) Sector

The Government of Canada has recognized the urgency of the climate crisis by passing the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act on June 29, 2021, and making significant financial commitments to net-zero, including investments in clean technology (cleantech) innovation, such as the $15-billion Canada Growth Fund to spur private capital investments into decarbonization and cleantech projects.^[1] Canada has also committed to a “just transition,” the aim of which is “to ensure that the transition to a net-zero economy is done in a way that creates new opportunities for Canadian workers and their communities—providing sustainable jobs for Canadians in every region.”^[2]

With these new investments and growth opportunities, workers may require new skills and competencies to participate meaningfully in the cleantech sector. Recent research by the Smart Prosperity Institute with the Diversity Institute and Future Skills Centre explores three scenarios for net-zero emissions and investigates the impacts on labour demand and skills in different sectors in 2050. While the pace of change differs, the direction is clear: New jobs will emerge not just in the cleantech sector, but also across other sectors as they introduce new processes to their value chains.^[3] The availability of cleantech, while important, is not the only issue as all sectors will be affected. Attention to the organizational transformation and adoption of cleantech and associated jobs and skills, is critically important.

Similarly, ECO Canada’s (2020) Cleantech Defined: A Scoping Study of the Sector and Its Workforce report (external link) ,^[4] which was commissioned by the Government of Canada’s Sector Initiatives Program to define the cleantech sector, shows the sector’s wide relevance.^[5] The report defines cleantech as “technology that uses less material or energy, generates less waste, and causes less negative environmental impacts than the industry standard.” This means that the cleantech economy is a “broad and inclusive sector [that] practically spans all industries in Canada.”^[6] As noted by the Diversity Institute in the Globe and Mail’s Excellence in Research and Innovation report (external link) , with its wide-ranging impacts, the cleantech sector resembles the information communications and technology (ICT) sector and enables innovation.^[7] As digitization has taken root, there are now more ICT jobs outside of the ICT sector than within it, many of them hybrid roles focused on implementation, organizational transformation and adoption. We can expect similar patterns to emerge with cleantech as we move to net zero.^[8]

Given the evolving nature of the cleantech sector, assessing the labour market characteristics and triangulating a variety of sources is necessary to understand the impact on jobs. Some previous efforts have examined the in-demand skills of the sector through a survey and interviews with cleantech companies.^[9] This post aims to contribute to this conversation by drawing upon the Vicinity Jobs database to analyze job posting data and in-demand skills by industry or sector.^[10]

ECO Canada identifies five subsectors in the cleantech sector and lists a series of North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes related to each one (see Appendix B).^[11] The five subsectors are 1. Alternative Energies 2. Energy Efficiency and Green Building Development 3. Sustainable Transportation 4. Waste Reduction and Lifecycle Management and 5. Support Services, Green Knowledge and Conservation. ECO Canada uses these subsectors to identify organizations that could comment on and validate their definition of the cleantech workforce. Although it is not intended to be a definitive list of cleantech sectors, we think it is an excellent starting point to understand the labour market characteristics—specifically job posting trends and skills sought—of the cleantech sector.^[12] Accordingly, we use these NAICS codes to identify the relevant job postings from the Vicinity Jobs database.

We looked at job postings from October 1, 2019, to September 30, 2022, to analyze labour market postings over a three-year period (Figure 1).^[13] The period covers labour market trends before the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns for a better overview of the cleantech sector.

Figure 1. Number of Online Job Postings by Month, October 1, 2019, to September 30, 2022

The cleantech sector witnessed a decline in job postings corresponding with the timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic as provinces started to declare a state of emergency in March 2020.^[14] The dip in job postings in April 2020 mirrors the low job posting numbers in the overall economy.^[15] Job postings in the sector have gradually recovered over time.

Figure 2. Job Postings by Month by Subsector, October 1, 2019, to September 30, 2022

The job postings by subsector tell another story (Figure 2). While job postings in all subsectors declined in April 2020, certain subsectors experienced stronger recovery.

The Energy Efficiency and Green Building Development subsector consistently had some of the highest job posting numbers and experienced a notable jump in online job postings from December 2021 onward. Conversely, the Waste Reduction and Lifecycle Management subsector consistently had the fewest job postings, although it has experienced an uptick in the number of job postings in the last year. The Support Services, Green Knowledge and Conservation subsector, while consisting only of two NAICS codes (see footnote 7), has been one of the largest contributors to job postings in the sector, but has declined since November 2021.

Skills Demanded in Job Postings

We also examined skills demanded in job postings during a two-and-a-half year period from April 1, 2020, to September 30, 2022, to see which skills are most in-demand in the sector.^[16]

Table 1. Top 10 Skills, April 1, 2020, to September 30, 2022

Note: The values under the column “percentage of job postings” were calculated using job postings with a NAICS code assigned (see footnote 13).

Most of the top skills in job postings are social-emotional skills,^[19] such as teamwork, communication, leadership, attention to detail and organizational skills. Microsoft Office and Excel were the only technology skills that made it into the top 10. Even when we look at the top skills within each subsector, social-emotional skills remain the most commonly sought.

Table 2. Top 10 Skills, Technologies Skills Group, April 1, 2020, to September 30, 2022

Additionally, when technology skills are required, the data indicate that organizations are most often looking for basic digital literacy skills––Microsoft Office and Excel––rather than “deep technical skills” like Javascript, C# and C++. The number of job postings that requested the latter skills are 725, 534 and 344, respectively.

As the conversations on net-zero and sustainability evolve, it becomes increasingly evident that the economy will change and the labour market with it. Cleantech is one projected avenue of growth in the coming clean economy. Given the large Government of Canada investment and private sector interest, we need good labour market data to inform policy makers, the skills training ecosystem, workers and employers.

This analysis is a preliminary investigation; as an emerging field, there are many opportunities for additional research and data collection. For instance, as the cleantech sector grows, the need for reliable and granular labour market information will be critically important, especially to support meaningful conversations about equity, diversity and inclusion in the sector.   

In our investigation, we found that social-emotional skills are some of the most demanded skills in job postings. This demonstrates the importance of non-specialized and non-technical skills like communication, teamwork and customer service, even in an ostensibly technical field. This reaffirms the importance and  transferability of foundational skills and competencies, many of which are listed in ESDC’s the Skills for Success framework.^[20]

We do not mean to suggest that technology skills are not important for the sector. Rather, we want to point out that discussions on skilling and reskilling for the cleantech sector cannot be limited to these specialized skills. The findings mirror the Diversity Institute’s research on the digital skills gap in the ICT sector.^[21] Cleantech jobs are not synonymous with computer science, engineering and other high-tech professions. Instead of skills like Javascript and C#, digital literacy skills, such as use of Microsoft Office, are more frequently sought after in job postings. Additionally, like the ICT sector, there may also be a wide range of unclassified hybrid roles–these are the workers with technical skills that mediate between technical experts and other functions of the organization, such as customer management.^[22]

As ECO Canada suggests, “the technologies, companies and workers considered to be part of cleantech today, may not necessarily be part of the cleantech economy in the future. Periodic snapshots of this sector are crucial to help shed light on job opportunities and their trajectory, as well as workforce challenges and opportunities.”^[23] Similar analyses using the Vicinity Jobs database will be useful to take snapshots of the cleantech sector and capture the shifting nature of the sector in the future.

Authors

Kevin (Joong-Woo) Jae, Yuna Kim