1887

OECD Economics Department Working Papers

Working papers from the Economics Department of the OECD that cover the full range of the Department’s work including the economic situation, policy analysis and projections; fiscal policy, public expenditure and taxation; and structural issues including ageing, growth and productivity, migration, environment, human capital, housing, trade and investment, labour markets, regulatory reform, competition, health, and other issues.

The views expressed in these papers are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the OECD or of the governments of its member countries.

English, French

A new measurement approach for identifying high-polluting jobs across European countries

This paper develops a novel classification of high-polluting occupations for a large sample of European countries. Unlike previous efforts in the literature, the classification exploits country-level data on air polluting emission intensity by industry. The country-level data allows to capture important cross-country differences, due to differences in technology and in production focus. Applying the new classification to European Labour Force Survey data shows that, on average across the countries covered, about 4% of workers are employed in high-polluting jobs, ranging from 9% in Czechia and the Slovak Republic to around 2% in Austria. These shares do not exhibit any clear decreasing trend over the past decade. High-polluting jobs are unequally distributed, being over-represented among men, workers with lower and medium educational attainment and those living in rural areas.

English

Keywords: climate change, green transition, labour markets, high-polluting jobs, air polluting emissions, classification
JEL: Q51: Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics / Environmental Economics / Valuation of Environmental Effects; Q56: Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics / Environmental Economics / Environment and Development; Environment and Trade; Sustainability; Environmental Accounts and Accounting; Environmental Equity; Population Growth; Q53: Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics / Environmental Economics / Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling; J21: Labor and Demographic Economics / Demand and Supply of Labor / Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
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