Green Jobs: Job Training and Career Pathways

In recent years, the federal government has prioritized the development of green jobs as the future for many American workers. Part of the impetus for this comes from recognizing old job training models are not appropriate for the globalized economy. As manufacturing and other traditional middle-class jobs have dried up in the United States, planners have attempted to identify potential areas of job growth and to develop models for training. In response to mounting pressures to mitigate carbon emissions and to stimulate economic growth and recovery, recent worldwide government investment in the development and dissemination of clean technologies has been unprecedented. Indeed, when the 2007 recession hit, the U.S. government looked to the green economy as a source of innovation, economic growth, and skilled job creation. The current focus on green jobs came about as the United States tried to raise itself out of the recent economic crisis. There was a widespread fear that factory-based jobs would be left out of the recovery as better-educated workers eventually found new positions. Carnevale, Smith, and Strohl (2010) indicated the share of jobs that require a postsecondary credential has risen from 29% in 1973 to 59% in 2008. Thus, the green jobs initiative was part of an effort to integrate advanced job training and job stimulation. Policy makers recognized individual learning alone could not solve the problems of poverty and systemic unemployment. Community- and industry-wide efforts would be required to build new structural opportunities to provide individuals with access to education and work that will place them on a pathway out of poverty. This approach is multipronged. It is aimed first at job training, but it also emphasizes innovation in the workplace and green energy. Green jobs are sometimes portrayed as a wonderful innovation that will change the economy and be the savior for the American worker. A rare confluence of interests created this state of affairs, and it is beyond the scope of this issue to analyze it in-depth. Therefore, in this issue, we hope to start a discussion of the bigger picture through an examination of some of the ways that green jobs training have been implemented. In fact, serious questions can be raised about this search for green jobs. Most importantly, do these jobs exist? What are the skills needed for the current job offerings? What educational reforms are required to prepare adults and youth for emerging jobs? We begin with an analysis of some of the permutations of this process of job training--how it looks and some of the challenges. Then we identify some innovative programs, while critically analyzing this new paradigm of green jobs. Ellen Scully-Russ begins this discussion by presenting the three principal types of models of career pathways that form the basis for much of this thinking about the green jobs legislation and funding. The career pathway model emerged as an innovation in career and technical education. Career pathways systematically link a sequence of education and credentials to the occupational structures in industries. This allows workers to move in and out of education and work through a sequencing of knowledge acquisition and career advancement. Scully-Russ notes that for the model to work, educational reforms must be accompanied by a new opportunity structure in industry to provide workers with access to higher skilled, more secure, and better paying jobs. Her article goes on to lay out the three major types of career pathways models that appear in literature. Then, she notes the actual challenges facing development of a workforce within green industries. Finally, she advances a series of propositions about the reciprocal relationship between the emerging green labor markets and the education and workforce development system. Scully-Russ offers these propositions as the basis for a proposed research agenda on the developmental effects of the career pathways model in education and the labor market. …