The green transition is at risk of stalling, as demand for green talent is outpacing supply – leaving one in five green jobs unfilled by 2030, according to experts during Eco-Business’ recent ‘Building a resilient workforce: Navigating Hong Kong’s green job evolution’ virtual forum.
LinkedIn’s head economist for Asia Pacific, Pei Ying Chua, sees a widening gap between the demand for green talent and the available workforce as a major obstacle to achieving global sustainability goals.
“Our models show that one in five green jobs will lack the talent to fill it by 2030,” said Chua, citing LinkedIn’s latest Global Green Skills report. The survey found that the gap between the demand and supply of green talent is projected to reach almost 19 per cent by 2030. If current trends continue, there will only be enough qualified workers to fill about half of the world’s green jobs by 2050.
To close this gap, industries would need to at least double the current projected green talent supply by 2050, said Chua. This would require greater global investment in green skills and education.
The global demand for green talent has grown by at least 5.9 per cent annually between 2021 and 2024, while the growth of the green talent pool lags at 3.2 per cent. In 2024, 7.5 per cent of openings listed on LinkedIn were green jobs or positions needing green skills.
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There is still a [prevailing] view that green is a cost. There needs to be a shift in mindset. It is not a cost. It is of benefit to [companies] to adopt greener strategies, whether it’s to adhere to regulations or to mitigate longer-term business risk.
Pei Ying Chua, head economist for Asia Pacific, LinkedIn
“[Fostering] more green talent is how we’re going to get to a green economy and a more climate-friendly future,” explained Chua, adding that job seekers with green skills are hired at a rate that’s over 50 per cent higher than the average. “[However] our biggest challenge now is that there are still not enough green workers. There are not enough people with green skills.”
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs 2025 report projects that climate adaptation will be the third-largest contributor to the growth in global jobs by 2030. Adaptation is expected to contribute an additional five million jobs and drive demand for roles such as sustainability specialists.
In Asia, Singapore leads as the country where demand for green jobs has risen the fastest at 27 per cent – the city-state is just behind Portugal, the United Kingdom and Costa Rica when it comes to demand growth globally in 2024. However, the growth in the world’s green talent pool is still largely concentrated in European countries, topped by Switzerland, Austria and Germany.
Indonesia and Malaysia show promise, with 5.75 per cent and 5.71 per cent growth, respectively, in green talent concentration between 2021 and 2024.
“[In Asia,] there is still a [prevailing] view that green is a cost. There needs to be a shift in mindset,” said Chua. “It is not a cost. It is of benefit to [companies] to adopt greener strategies, whether it’s to adhere to regulations or to be more appealing to clients or to mitigate longer-term business risk.”
Between 2023 and 2024, the technology, information and media industries saw the sharpest green talent demand spike as the share of jobs requiring green skills surged 60 per cent.
The demand for green workers is projected to grow, despite expected disruption from artificial intelligence (AI) to all kinds of work. The World Economic Forum’s 2025 Future of Jobs survey highlights that 86 per cent of respondents expect AI to have the biggest impact on their industry.
Dr Joey Tan, head of strategic initiatives and business development at Microsoft Singapore, believes that AI will not reduce the need for green jobs. On the contrary, Tan expects demand to grow exponentially as Southeast Asian countries implement mandatory sustainability disclosures for listed companies.
“[There’s going] to be an increase in competition for talent,” said Tan. “This is the first year Singapore activated [mandatory] sustainability reporting for listed companies and we’ve seen it’s huge [boost] in demand. Thailand and Indonesia [will soon] also adopt the same approach. That is one huge demand signal.”
A LinkedIn survey shows that Singapore has a 19 per cent gap in green talent demand and supply growth between 2023 and 2024. With Southeast Asian neighbours Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand also rolling out mandatory climate-related disclosures for listed companies, this gap in the region is expected to widen.
An Economic Graph report also highlights a noticeable gender gap in the world’s talent pool for green workers. Nine in ten women in the workplace lack a single green skill, while one in six men qualify as green talent.
“[I believe] this is just a teething problem,” said LinkedIn’s Chua. “Sustainability is still fairly new [to our industries]. It takes time to set up training programmes. It takes time to develop the right curriculum with the right instructors and figure out how to scale up these courses so that you can you can teach a larger pool of people quickly. Hopefully, it will get better over time.”
