Survey counts up 'green' jobs in Oregon

EUGENE, Ore. --- An estimated 51,400 Oregonians worked in so-called green jobs last year, according to a new report from the state Employment Department.

The recently released report, based on a survey of employers, found that green jobs accounted for nearly 3 percent of employment in the private sector and in state and local government. That's roughly equivalent to the number of people who work in hospitals in Oregon, said Charlie Johnson, an economist with the Employment Department.

"What we found in our survey, and the reason why we call it a greening of Oregon's economy, is that we didn't find a separate unique economy, different from Oregon's economy," he said. "Many, if not all, of the green jobs are in occupations that already are in existence."

Green jobs are defined in the report to include those that involve working to: increase energy efficiency; produce renewable energy; prevent, reduce or mitigate environmental degradation; clean up and restore the natural environment; or provide education, consultation, policy promotion, accreditation, trading and offsets, or other similar services related to the first four categories.

That definition was made purposefully broad, leaving room for interpretation from each employer who completed the survey, according to the report's authors. They said that part of measuring green jobs is capturing public sentiment and counting jobs the public views as green.

"We found employers have a broad view of what constitutes a green job," Johnson said.

Green jobs counted in the report include engineers and architects; farmers and fishers; salespeople and lawyers; carpenters and truck drivers.

And even though employers responded to the survey last winter, in the depths of the recession, they were forecasting green jobs would increase 14 percent between 2008 and 2010.

Lane Community College President Mary Spilde said the state report points up the difficulty of doing an accurate count of green jobs.

"When you're working in an environment where jobs are emerging, it's hard to figure out where they all are," she said. "When people talk about green jobs, they say, 'What the heck does that mean?' One of the values of this survey is trying to come up with a definition."

LCC's energy management program, which has been around since the late 1980s, has seen a surge of interest, particularly among older students who already are working but are returning to school to train for a specific job, she said.

"More and more attention is being paid to the future of green jobs," she said.

The balance that community colleges are trying to strike is getting workers trained while waiting for green jobs to emerge, she said.

Another report indicates Oregon has seen rapid growth in one segment of green jobs over the past decade: Employment in Oregon's clean energy economy grew 6.5 times faster than overall jobs between 1998 and 2007, according to a Pew Charitable Trusts report, released June 10.

"Oregon has a large and fast-growing piece of American's clean energy economy," said Dan Lombardi, Oregon field representative for the Pew Environmental Group.

Oregon has more jobs in the clean energy sector, as a share of the overall economy, than any other state, he said.