Leiden, 3 July 2026 – SkiLMeeT researcher Federico Fabio Frattini (FEEM) presented new findings from the project at the World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economics, held in Carcavelos, Portugal.
Speaking during the Green Labour and Voluntary Standards session on 2 July 2026, Frattini presented research exploring whether green jobs provide sufficient financial incentives for workers to invest in the skills needed for the green transition.
The study, co-authored by Leanne Cass, Aurélien Saussay, Misato Sato, and Francesco Vona, analysed millions of online job vacancies across Europe between 2018 and 2023 to examine whether green jobs pay more than comparable roles and what drives any observed wage differences.
The researchers found that green jobs offer an average wage premium of 5.5% compared with similar vacancies in the same occupation. Approximately 2.8 percentage points of this premium are explained by differences between employers, suggesting that more productive firms or those with greater economic rents tend to offer higher wages for green roles. A further 0.9 percentage points reflect the greater skill complexity associated with green jobs, while 1.8 percentage points represent the additional wage return linked specifically to performing green tasks.
Overall, the findings suggest that while green jobs are associated with higher wages, only a small share of the premium is directly linked to green tasks themselves. This indicates that wage incentives alone may not be sufficient to encourage workers to acquire the skills needed for the green transition.
The research has been published in the Grantham Research Institute Working Paper series of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and can be accessed here.
