of greenness of a job can vary depending on the importance of green tasks. Not all jobs in a firm producing a green output are green jobs involving green tasks.

Some examples help to better understand the multiple dimensions and how they relate to classifying a job as green or non-green, depending on the question at hand. First, there are jobs that, given green technologies established at the firm, may require workers to perform certain green practices that are not essential to successfully producing the outputs for which the job was created. This is the case of an office worker contributing to a paperless office or a supermarket cashier offering paper bags instead of plastic bags. These types of green practices may require workers to have some environmental awareness or green-citizen skills.<sup>9</sup> However, such practices are not tasks since they are not essential to the production of the output for which the job was created. Thus, this paper<sup>10</sup> does not consider as green those jobs that involve only these types of practices; they do not involve green tasks. Second, there are jobs that are created due to the greening<sup>11</sup> of the economy, but whose task-content is not green. This is the case of a team assistant in a solar power factory. Third, and slightly similarly to the previous case, there are jobs that are performed at firms that have adopted green technologies, but the technology does not alter tasks. This could be the case of a driver of an electric car. These are usually referenced in the literature as _indirect green jobs_ or g _reen increased-demand occupations,_ but for this note’s definition, these are not green jobs. These cases are still relevant for other policy purposes though, as further explained in the next subsection.

# **B. Measurement approaches and their suitability for skills policy**

This section describes the four approaches introduced above, looking into what they measure, the challenges of each of them during data collection or the application of the methodology, especially in developing countries, and how each of them contributes to informing skills policy, which is the reason for developing this paper. It also presents international examples of how they have been applied, with more details for the task approach since it is found to be the most suitable for informing skills policy.

## The output approach

The **output approach** estimates the number of workers employed in firms producing environmentally friendly goods and services. These firms are likely to operate in the environmental goods and services sectors (EGSS). The OECD and Eurostat have laid out the foundation for data collection and analysis of the EGSS.<sup>12</sup> Identifying green jobs or occupations through this approach could be quite straightforward: when the firm produces only green outputs in the EGSS, all employees are considered to be performing

> 9 What the ILO (2021) understands as ‘Basic skills necessary for adapting oneself to related environmental regulation and requirements to curb climate change.'

> 10 For this paper, from section 3 onwards, green jobs will be those with green tasks.

> 11 Greening of the economy means the production of greener outputs (products and services) and the use of greener technologies.

12 See OECD and Eurostat (1999), and Eurostat (2009). The OECD and Eurostat have been pioneers and have developed a handbook to determine environmentally friendly goods and services. The handbook has guided the efforts of other institutions and the development of survey instruments like the Green Goods and Services Survey of the BLS.

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