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Since the Obama administration and Congress wheeled out the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in February, it became clear that government agencies put their early energies into financial triage for workers stripped of their income.
The longer-term cure, however, involves creating self-sustaining work-force training systems for emerging industries ”“ including preparing workers for “green-collar” jobs in sustainable-energy and environmental fields.
While the U.S. Department of Labor was quick to prop up state unemployment benefit funds with more than $3 billion in new funding, as of early June just $32 million of a promised $2.9 billion had been released for new programs to train workers who have lost their jobs, according to a DOL log on disbursements.
That does not include more than $6 million in supplemental funding released to bolster its Trade Adjustment Act, or TAA, benefits, which is reserved for workers who lose jobs as a result of outsourcing or competition from foreign companies. Last month DOL authorized TAA benefits for 75 workers laid off from Vishay Vitramon L.L.C.”™s facility in Monroe.
DOL recently expanded the TAA program to include funding for workers in service industries, but no Connecticut workers received funding in the first tranche of funds under the expanded definition.
Separately, the Workplace Inc., a work-force investment board covering lower Fairfield County, received $600,000 in ARRA funding under DOL”™s YouthBuild program to train high-school dropouts, or teens who have been in the juvenile justice system.
And with a small amount of funding, the state is running a pilot program through which it is covering half the costs of training manufacturing workers to better understand environmentally prudent production methods. Three Hartford-area companies had signed up for the program as of early June, with the state not immediately announcing the final three grant recipients.
In all Connecticut has been promised at least $41 million in ARRA funding for training purposes. Separately, the state received nearly $5 million this month from the sale of credits to companies complying with greenhouse gas emissions caps, pledging to put the funding to use developing environmental and renewable-energy industries and jobs.
In a study published last fall sponsored by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the economics analysis firm Global Insight determined that the Fairfield County area boasted a mere 800 jobs as of 2006 in the areas of renewable-energy generation and fuels, and increased energy efficiency for buildings.
By comparison, the Hartford area supported 8,000 such jobs and metropolitan New York City some 25,000, including parts of New Jersey, Long Island and Westchester County.
Whereas Hartford was expected to have more than 63,000 green jobs over the next three decades, Fairfield County was expected to only crack the 6,000-job mark.
Still, the county enjoys immediate proximity to the New York City metropolitan market, which is expected to increase its green jobs total from 25,000 as of three years ago to add about 7,000 jobs annually over the next three decades.
Global Insight estimates that consulting, engineering, legal and research positions account for more than half of all green jobs today, but forecasts more limited growth in that component of the sector ”“ not every job created to retrofit a building will result in a commiserate consulting position.
The most obvious candidate for the rapid expansion of green jobs is a large-scale building retrofit program, according to Robert Pollin, a University of Massachusetts economist who has authored several studies on clean energy investment.
Earlier this year, North Carolina State University economists identified nearly 100 “green-collar” occupations that represented emerging opportunities for workers, from blue-collar technician jobs such as solar panel installers to new white-collar careers such as corporate chief sustainability officers. The most green jobs development activity is occurring in:
agriculture and forestry;
construction;
consulting, design and research;
emissions sequestration;
energy efficiency;
energy trading;
environmental protection;
manufacturing;
recycling and waste reduction;
regulatory administration;
renewable energy generation; and
transportation.
