Disentangling the greening of the labour market : the role of changing occupations and worker flows

Using a text-mining approach applied to task descriptions of occupations together with worker-level administrative data, we explore the growth in the greenness of employment in Germany between 2012 and 2022. We first show that the greening of occupations over time (“within-effect”) is as important for the overall greening of employment as shifting occupational employment shares (“between-effect”). Second, we examine which occupations and task types contribute most to the within-effect, and which worker flows are mainly responsible for the between-effect. Third, we demonstrate that the employment prospects of foreign and of low-skilled workers are most at risk from the green transition.