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Green jobs and businesses

Employment and business data for various definitions of the green, low carbon and net zero sector

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There is currently no standardised way of defining "green" businesses or jobs. Industry and occupation-based classifications are often not useful for this purpose because green activities can be only part of the role of a specific business or job, with the proportion varying within each classification.

This page provides estimates from more than one source and will be updated as definitions become more widely agreed. 

The low carbon and renewable energy economy

In order to estimate the size of the low carbon and renewable energy economy (LCREE), ONS has developed a survey of businesses that asks them about their LCREE activities. The annual statistical release is currently only available at national level, but regional estimates have been produced for 2020, which combine survey responses with administrative data from other sources.

The North East region includes the North East and Tees Valley LEP areas. In the region in 2020:

  • LCREE turnover was £2.74 billion, about 7.9% of the England total
  • LCREE employment was 7,600, about 4.4% of the England total
    LCREE turnover per worker was the highest among the nine English regions
  • LCREE turnover was highest in the nuclear sector and the low emission vehicles and infrastructure sector
  • together, these were responsible for three fifths of the region's LCREE turnover
  • LCREE employment was highest in the "other energy efficient products" and nuclear sectors
  • together, these were responsible for about 58% of the region's LCREE employment
  • data for England as a whole, suggests that, nationally, there was a 24% increase in LCREE turnover and a 15% increase in LCREE employment between 2020 and 2021.

Green and brown jobs

"Net zero jobs", a Resolution Foundation publication from 2022 set out information about "green jobs" and "brown jobs" in the UK. Broadly, their definition of green jobs relates to activities consistent with delivering the net zero transition. Those jobs that require significant change to be consistent with net zero are classified as brown. 

Their green and brown job definitions are based on detailed occupation classifications (SOC2010). These classifications can be combined with ONS published data to provide estimates of the number of green and brown jobs in each of the nine English statistical regions. The North East region includes the North East and Tees Valley LEP areas.

The totals are only available up to and including 2021 as ONS releases used SOC2020 classifications after this date. We will continue to investigate the possibility of updating the definitions to the later classification system. The totals are estimates that are based on survey data and, therefore have levels of uncertainty. This is particularly true for occupations with relatively few workers within them, where employment data is sometimes unavailable.

With these caveats, in the North East region in 2021:

  • About 114,000 residents were estimated to be working in green job occupations
  • just under 48,000 were working in brown jobs
  • the first total was lower than in 2020 while the second was higher
  • the latest year on year changes differed from the broad trends in the three year average data. The number of green jobs in the region had been gently increasing since 2004 while the number of brown jobs had been gently decreasing
  • about 10% of North East region residents were employed in green jobs, with about 4% in brown jobs
  • these percentages were, respectively, lower and higher than the England equivalents and this had been the case in each year from 2004 onwards
  • the percentage employed in green jobs was the lowest among the nine English regions, with the percentage in brown jobs the joint highest.