Green Vacancies by Occupation

Read the summary below or download the entire Chapter Five from the printed report.

The greening of Minnesota’s economy is most clearly observable at the occupational level, where new green tasks are being added to traditional occupational tasks.  While green jobs are distributed across many occupations (see pie chart), nearly half of all green job vacancies are concentrated in three major occupational groups: Installation, Maintenance, and Repair; Architecture and Engineering; and Construction. A snapshot of each of the green occupational groups follows.

Installation, Maintenance, and Repair
Repair and maintenance services are needed throughout the green economy, but predominantly they contribute to energy efficiency by operating, installing, replacing, and fixing systems such as furnaces, boilers, HVAC systems, and factory equipment to optimize their use. 

Architecture and Engineering
Engineers are the backbone of the green economy. Their range of activities includes developing new technology and incorporating it into products while ensuring quality and performance; identifying solutions to one-of-a-kind technical problems; and educating customers about the long-term environmental benefits of green solutions.  

Construction
Construction occupations are involved in everything from building new and retrofitting existing structures to improve energy efficiency, to light rail and other transit projects, to erecting the towers and electric lines that connect wind turbines to the power grid.

Management and Business Specialists 
These occupations are critically important to the future of the green economy because of the role they play in market creation, customer education, organizational development, and regulatory compliance. Business operations specialists have the highest concentration of new green job titles in Minnesota, reflecting the emergence of new green subspecialties such as regulatory affairs and environmental compliance managers, lean supply chain managers, logistics analysts and green marketers.

Life and Physical Scientists 
These occupations not only conduct laboratory research, but they help get products from the research and development stage into production. They also assist engineers, architects and construction managers to incorporate ecological concepts into buildings, landscape and remediation design. An emerging area of activity for life scientists is green product certification.

Green Production
In general, green production jobs involve the performance of traditional production tasks that happen to be essential to the production of a green product.  In Minnesota these workers: separate recyclable from non-recyclable material in recycling plants; operate and troubleshoot machines predominantly used to make green products (e.g. water filtration membranes); monitor and operate machinery and pumps in municipal wastewater treatment facilities; and operate and ensure efficient use of boilers.

Sales and Related
The sale of many green products often requires specialized knowledge in order to demonstrate the product’s benefits to the customer and to obtain constant feedback on product uses and areas of improvement. Green sales and related jobs are most often technical sales representatives.

Green Transportation
Green transportation jobs in Minnesota involve collecting recyclable goods and driving public buses or passenger trains.

Other Occupations
Other occupations where green jobs are found typically include agricultural, forestry, & conservation and building & grounds maintenance jobs.