Measuring green jobs in Italy: A task-based approach

The transition towards a green economy has made the identification and measurement of Green Jobs increasingly relevant for both researchers and policymakers. However, definitions remain fragmented, and cross-country measures are often inconsistent and poorly adapted to national contexts. This paper develops a new task-based measure of Green Jobs for the Italian labor market. Using the Italian Sample Survey on Professions (ICP), we identify 204 green-related tasks across 84 occupations and construct both continuous and binary indicators of occupational "greenness." The approach combines textual analysis and machine learning techniques to improve the accuracy of existing green measures, previously derived from U.S. occupation codes. These indicators are then merged with the Mandatory Communications dataset to examine the characteristics and labor market outcomes of Italian Green Workers. Results show that Italian Green Jobs are more frequent among male and low-educated workers, concentrated in manufacturing and southern regions, and display a higher incidence of temporary contracts. The association between our continuous greenness indicator and the likelihood of permanent employment is negative and statistically significant, even after several robustness checks. These findings highlight a paradox of the Italian green transition: while Green Jobs are central to environmental policy goals, they tend to be more precarious than other forms of employment. This calls for targeted labor market policies to ensure that the shift towards sustainability does not come at the expense of job stability.