How Do You Count Climate Adaptation Jobs?

EESI’s latest update of the Climate Jobs Fact Sheet summarizes key information about climate-related jobs across the United States, which amounted to more than 4.2 million jobs in 2022. Much of the jobs data brought together in the fact sheet comes from the annual Department of Energy U.S. Energy and Employment Report—a key resource for anyone interested in energy-related jobs information. Two of the main areas covered in this report are renewable energy and energy efficiency, which are essential tools for climate mitigation. However, the report does not provide information on jobs pertaining to climate change adaptation.

Adapting to climate impacts, from extreme heat to sea level rise, is critical and requires a robust workforce to adequately address the challenge. Yet there is no national standardized methodology for counting the number of people working in climate adaptation. EESI’s 2021 adaptation jobs explainer explored why this is the case. Three years later, in 2024, counting adaptation jobs continues to face the same set of challenges.

Without a Bureau of Labor Statistics Standard Occupational Classification code for adaptation, counting every climate adaptation job in the country remains out of reach. However, just because a full national count is not possible, that does not mean there are not city planners working to make sure their town is building more flood-resilient infrastructure, or farmers introducing new regiments to protect their crops from drought, flooding, and erosion.

In partnership with the American Society of Adaptation Professionals (ASAP) and some of their individual members who specialize in workforce issues, EESI has continued its effort to understand the climate adaptation jobs landscape. One way of approaching this is to look at the membership of ASAP—the professional organization for people with adaptation jobs. As of the publication of the 2024 fact sheet, ASAP had 1,400 individual members and over 40 organizational members that employ more than 180,000 people. While this represents just a sliver of the overall adaptation workforce, it does provide baseline information on individuals, organizations, companies, and federal agencies that identify their work as advancing climate change adaptation.

Another useful angle is hiring data—how many publicly posted jobs are hiring for positions that focus on climate change adaptation? One way to look at these data is through Lightcast (formerly known as Burning Glass Technology) labor market intelligence software products, which house a massive database of job postings. Using a series of queries (i.e., if/then statements entered into the database—for example, if a job title includes ‘climate resilience,’ then include it in the list) tested over the past few years of analysis, the ASAP members working on this project generated a universe of jobs that may be adaptation jobs. Then, the EESI team reviewed a statistically significant random sample of the jobs on this list to determine, through a more in-depth review of the job description, if each position meets the criteria of an adaptation job. Based on that sample, EESI determined an estimate of the number of adaptation hires in a given year.

The criteria used to review the jobs was based on ASAP’s criteria for posting a job on their own job board. If ‘climate adaptation’ or ‘climate resilience’ were in the job title or prominently featured in the job description, the position was considered to be an adaptation job. If not, then the reviewer looked for ‘climate change’ in combination with terms like ‘preparedness’ or ‘impacts.’ Job descriptions that discussed using future climate data and information were also included, as were jobs focused on addressing specific climate impacts like drought, flooding, erosion, heat, wildfire, and sea level rise. Jobs focused on climate justice and jobs at organizations working with frontline communities were also counted as adaptation jobs because they are inherently, even if not explicitly, dealing with the impacts of climate change.

It is important to note that this methodology does skew the data heavily towards white collar jobs, and consequently overlooks entire categories of the workforce. For example, while it would capture a resilience officer for a municipality, it likely would not count most of the people hired to staff cooling centers that are essential to help communities deal with extreme heat. Therefore, these numbers should be understood as just one way to start to measure the number of people joining or moving around in the adaptation workforce. In other words, it is a floor for the number of adaptation jobs being hired for in a given year.

That being said, as reported in the fact sheet, EESI’s collaborative analysis found that at least 1,500 professional-level (i.e., full time, non-internship) adaptation jobs were hired for in 2022. The highest number of job opportunities were in California, D.C., Massachusetts, New York, and Texas—though there were listings for adaptation jobs in all 50 states.

We know adaptation workers are out there—at engineering firms like WSP, for example, or universities like Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and government entities from Miami-Dade County to federal agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. EESI will continue working with partners to ensure adaptation jobs are made visible through the Climate Jobs Fact Sheet with each new update. If more data or tools are out there, let us know!

Thank you to Rachel Jacobson and Maria Hart for developing this overall project, providing data for the analysis, and lending their expertise to this effort and to EESI colleagues Nicole Pouy, Maggie Christianson, and Laura Gries for conducting the analysis.

Author: Anna McGinn