Leiden, 18 June 2026 – Research from the SkiLMeeT project has been published in the Grantham Research Institute Working Paper series of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), providing new evidence on the role of wage incentives in supporting the green transition.
The paper, “Returns to green tasks in Europe: evidence from online job vacancies”, by Leanne Cass, Federico Fabio Frattini, Aurélien Saussay, Misato Sato and Francesco Vona, analyses millions of online job vacancies across Europe between 2018 and 2023.
Their findings show that while green jobs appear to pay around 5.5% more on average, most of this gap is explained by the fact that these jobs are often offered by higher-paying firms and tend to require broader or more advanced skills. Once these factors are taken into account, the actual wage premium for performing green tasks is only about 2%.
The authors suggest that wage incentives alone are unlikely to encourage workers to move into green roles at the scale needed for the green transition. This points to the importance of continued investment in training, reskilling and broader workforce development policies across Europe.
