Young people’s environmental consciousness is increasingly becoming a decisive factor in their professional lives. While many people below age 30 say they want to work in an environmentally conscious job, they lack the necessary skills to make this a reality.

And the figures reflect this skills gap: worldwide, only one out of 20 Generation Z employees is sufficiently trained to apply for a green job, according to a LinkedIn report. But they aren’t necessarily aware of this: only 40% of these workers acknowledge that they lack the necessary skills for a job that contributes directly to preserving the environment.

Instead, young people tend to think they’re disadvantaged by their lack of overall professional experience, or by the fact that there are few positions of this kind available. On the latter point, they’re mistaken: the International Labour Organization estimates that 24 million green jobs will be created worldwide by 2030.

And LinkedIn last year noted that, on its platform, the number of job offers mentioning at least one green skill increased by 22.4% between 2022 and 2023.

So what accounts for the discrepancy in terms of Gen Z’s awareness of this demand? Efrem Bycer, sustainability and employment policy specialist at LinkedIn, believes young people may have a limited view of what a green job is.

“If you think climate jobs just have ‘sustainability’ in the title or are only offered by a climate tech company, that’s a limited view. There are a lot more jobs that contribute to climate action. So the problem is partly skills, partly signalling,” he told Business Insider.

The fight against climate change concerns everyone: sooner or later, every company, whatever its sector of activity, will have to take action to implement a sustainable roadmap. This ecological transition will also contribute to the creation of new professions that relate to environmental issues.

But working people, especially in younger generations, still need to have the necessary qualifications to make valuable contributions to companies’ greening process. Only 41% of Gen Z surveyed by LinkedIn said their companies would be able to send them for training that would help them acquire green skills, whereas 78% said they would like to have the opportunity.

Institutions and public authorities, therefore, need to facilitate these types of training, as do companies on a corporate level, for the future of the planet.