LinkedIn: Green Skills Demand is Growing Faster than Supply

The call for hiring sustainability experts is expanding almost twice as fast as the development of green skills among workers, according to LinkedIn's 2025 Green Skills Report.

For this study, LinkedIn analysed its more than one billion members worldwide from 2021 to 2025. The findings show that ‘green hiring’ grew by almost 8% per year, compared with the 4.3% growth in the share of workers with ‘green skills’.

This disparity between demand and supply shows that, while momentum behind the climate transition is growing, the global workforce might not currently be equipped to facilitate it.

"The gulf between demand and supply of skilled workers continues to put this at risk," says Sue Duke, Vice President of Public Policy and Economic Graph at LinkedIn.

The general level of climate savviness is on the up, as the report shows that 17.6% of workers now hold at least one green skill, which is up from 16.8% in 2024.

However, the pace of that growth is simply insufficient right now. What’s more, the growth in climate skills has slowed from 5.5% in 2023-24 to 4.3% in 2024-25, which raises further concerns about whether the workforce can keep pace with the planet’s climate commitments.

The tech sector is leading the green hiring surge

The technology, information and media industry recorded the highest average annual growth in green hires between 2021 and 2025 at 11.3%, according to LinkedIn’s statistics.

This surge may speak to the sector's dual challenge of managing AI's resource intensity while also deploying the technology necessary for climate solutions.

Among AI talent specifically, skills like ‘operational efficiency’ grew by 579% year-on-year, while ‘maintenance and repair’ shot up by 190%.

These surges come at a time when all technology-adjacent sectors are growing considerably, both financially and in terms of their emissions.

The data centre sector, for instance, has seen its energy consumption grow by 12% a year since 2017, while it is projected to more than double to 945 TWh by 2030, according to the IEA.

This trend is particularly pronounced in the financial services sector, where green hires have spiked by 16.3%, driven particularly by key European markets where France recorded 20% growth, the UK 15.3% and Germany 9.2%.

This is an acceleration that may stem from EU legislation requiring greater expertise in climate risk management and sustainable finance.

Green skills are becoming more important across departments

For the first time, workers with green skills in non-green job titles make up 53% of all green hires, marking a shift in how sustainability competencies are applied across organisations.

This dispersal suggests that green skills are increasingly recognised as drivers of efficiency, resilience and competitiveness, rather than solely environmental outcomes.

In 2023, a Deloitte survey found that half of business leaders were already educating their employees on matters of sustainability and climate change, with another 41% planning programmes within the coming two years.

Now, workers with green skills are enjoying a significant hiring advantage – securing jobs at a rate 46.6% higher than the overall workforce.

In India this premium reaches a huge 59.7%, while in France it stands at 27.8%.

According to LinkedIn, ‘energy management’ became the fastest-growing green skill category globally, with a 17.4% increase over the past year, which reflects surges in demand for AI infrastructure, energy efficiency measures and the sourcing of renewable energy.

Why there are shortages in the energy and utilities sectors

The utilities industry, which encompasses renewable energy generation, has the highest green talent concentration at 29.6%, according to the report.

Nevertheless, its share of green hiring reached 33.4%, indicating that even this sector is struggling to recruit enough specialised workers.

The International Energy Association (IEA) has predicted that global electricity consumption is going to rise by 3,500 TWh over the next three years, which is equivalent to adding Japan's annual energy consumption to the global ledger.

The IEA believes that renewables and nuclear are expected to meet 95% of this growth. This, however, means that the need for skilled individuals to accommodate these projects is going to be huge.

Just this week, headlines have circulated about the renaissance of nuclear energy, with the UK and US announcing US$19bn in joint funding for new reactors, alongside US$35bn in private investments in nuclear from Microsoft and Google.

In the US, the nuclear energy industry's hiring rate runs 33.4% higher than the national average, which speaks to the huge demand placed on the sector.

Why gender disparities are threatening transition goals

LinkedIn’s study shows that women are still significantly underrepresented in industries with the highest demand for green skills, like utilities, construction and technology.

LinkedIn suggests that skills-based hiring could help to address this imbalance, with research showing it increases women's representation in qualified talent pools by 26% in US construction and 22% in Indian utilities.

Companies like Neoenergia in Brazil have shown this in action, with targeted programmes helping to increase female representation among electrician hires from 1.7% in 2019 to 51.9% in 2024.

With the demand for skilled and talented individuals higher than ever, it seems that many companies are pushing to make their hiring and training policies as inclusive as possible. 

LinkedIn’s recommendations

At the end of the report, LinkedIn’s researchers make the call for governments to embed workforce development into their climate and energy policies.

They also call for improved coordination across departments, and for updates to education systems to better reflect sustainability competencies.

Research from C40 Cities suggests that up to 51% of future demand for green talent may go unmet without the kind of strategic intervention that LinkedIn recommends.

"We will only close the gap if decisive action is taken now to make skills and workforce training a core part of climate and energy policy,” she says.