GRJ0003

UK Women’s Budget Group

Submission to the Environmental Audit inquiry:

Green jobs

1. The UK Women’s Budget Group (WBG) is an independent network of leading academic researchers, policy experts and campaigners that analyses the gendered impact of economic policy on different groups of women and men and promotes alternative policies for a gender equal economy.

2. We welcome the Environmental Audit Committee’s work on green jobs and draw on work on a feminist green new deal and our Commission on a Gender Equal Economy final report: ‘Creating a Caring Economy’ to answer the relevant questions.

3. Our submission focuses on the need for a caring economy and highlights that care jobs are green jobs so that any investment in green infrastructure and employment includes social infrastructure like adult social care and childcare. We have only answered questions that are relevant to our work and remit.

4. A caring economy is a sustainable one. It builds in care for the environment and ensures our activities are sustainable and compatible with the ecological limits of the planet. In particular, a caring economy will ensure a fairer distribution of these jobs, so that women, young people, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people, and disabled people are trained in the skills required for working in green jobs in energy, transport and housing. These jobs will also be designed to take account of caring responsibilities.

5. WBG research[1] finds that Investing in the care sector is an important way of addressing the impending simultaneous jobs and climate crises, as well as taking steps towards gender equality, wellbeing and sustainability:

1. Recent research has shown that investment of 1% of GDP in the care sector would produce 2.7 times as many jobs in the economy overall as an equivalent investment in construction, 6.3 times as many for women and 10% more for women.
2. Investment in care would also be more in line with the UK’s climate change commitments, as investing in care is three times less polluting per job created overall than equivalent investment in construction.
3. Increasing the numbers working in care to 10% of the employed population, as in Sweden and Denmark, and giving all care workers a pay rise to the real living wage would create 2 million jobs, increasing overall employment rates by 5% points and decreasing the gender employment gap by 4% points.
4. Investing in care therefore has the dual benefit of creating jobs – and tax revenue - that are mostly done by women therefore increasing their labour market participation and, enabling other women to achieve labour market equality. Children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, also benefit from high quality childcare and education.

Table 3 Raising employment in care to 10% of employed population: employment generated and spending required under various wage scenarios

Source: Calculations by Jerome De Henau for WBG, based on 2015 data from Eurostat

Does the UK workforce have the skills and capacity needed to deliver the green jobs required to meet our net zero target and other environmental ambitions (including in the 25-year environment plan)?

6. Currently, the UK does not have the skills and capacity to deliver green jobs needed to meet net zero. A huge part of this is due to lack of investment in the care sector where 1 in 7 older people have unmet care needs[2] and 1 in 4 nurseries are set to close within the year due to a decade of austerity followed by mismanagement during the pandemic[3].

7. In order to meet net zero a large proportion of the employed population will need to be moved into lower carbon jobs, as well as into explicitly ‘green jobs.’ This means investing in public sector employment and especially, the care sector.

What needs to be done to ensure that these skills and capacity are developed in time to meet our environmental targets?

8. There are opportunities to reskill and divert people who have lost their jobs as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic as well as creating green and caring jobs by investing in social and physical infrastructure projects.

9. Covid-19 has exposed the precarity and low pay of the UK labour market. Post-pandemic recovery must be based on the principle of social and environmental sustainability. This requires action against exploitative zero hours contracts and low pay as well as investment in skills. The UK Women’s Budget Group echoes the call from the Trade Union Congress that these new jobs are paid at an increased and accurate real living wage, are securely contracted and unionised[4].

10. In the care sector especially, workers’ skill level and training opportunities need investment. Although we are prepared to entrust our young and old to them, most of those working in child and adult care are classified as unskilled, given minimal training, often on zero-hours contracts, with little or no prospects for promotion. Care work is high-skilled work requiring substantial training throughout a workers’ career. Training opportunities and qualifications ought to reflect this at every level.

11. There will also be a need to redivert and reskill some workers from sectors that have been hardest hit such as aviation and hospitality or, those whose jobs are at risk of automation. This will require providing subsidies or other incentives (including paid education leave) to support women, low-income and BAME people to access training and development programmes and give more people access to high-skilled work.

12. Investment in skills is an investment in wellbeing but also in the economy since healthier people can participate in the economy.

13. Increasing the national living wage to the rate set by the Living Wage foundation is another way to create well-paid jobs as well as ensuring they are high-skilled. This increase would reduce the number of workers dependent on social security and increase tax revenue. 

14. Investment in the green economy should be accompanied by action to reduce occupational segregation and enable women to take advantage of the new jobs created. At the same time increasing the pay of sectors where women currently predominate such as teaching and caring, would help close the gender pay gap and encourage more men into these jobs.

15. Education also has a role in ending occupational segregation in the green sectors. This requires funding for programmes in schools, universities and vocational education to support women and girls, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, into STEM roles, including green STEM roles through training and apprenticeships. This should be accompanied by financial support including subsided training and paid education leave to support women, low-income and BAME people to access training and development programmes and give more people access to high-skilled work in the new green economy.

16. Employment and training strategies must include policies to reduce and redistribute the burden of unpaid labour. Prior to the pandemic women were doing 60% more unpaid work than men, which limited their time for paid work. This requires investment in childcare and social care as set out above. It also requires genuinely shared parental leave policies whereby well-paid, individual, non-transferable entitlements are available for each parent, as well as a shared element, and other incentives to encourage fathers to take leave.

17. Post-Covid recovery should also take account of pre-existing challenges including job losses as a result of automation. The actions set out above would enable workers at risk of replacement to retrain and find work in green and care sectors.

How can the UK ensure jobs are created in areas most impacted by the transition to a low-carbon economy?

18. The Government has made claim to ‘levelling up’ but this must be a key part of decarbonisation since jobs lost from high-carbon industries will be disproportionately allocated across the country. The just transition must not exacerbate regional inequalities of unemployment, poverty and destitution.

19. Investment care can ensure that local green jobs are created for local people: where construction and STEM workers might be more likely to ‘helicopter’ into an area for a project, care jobs are long-term and sustainable ways of boosting local economies.

What additional interventions should be undertaken to aid in a ‘just transition’?

20. It is essential that policies implemented as part of the just transition go through meaningful and comprehensive equality impact assessments to ensure their mutual benefit for groups with protected characteristics, including women. Some examples of things to consider when designing green policies include:
1. All physical infrastructure ought to be collectively designed at the local level with the participation of women taken into account. E.g. do community organising spaces provide a creche? Are they at family-accessible times of day and locations?
2. Transport plans should take account of how women use transport differently to juggle caring responsibilities. Women are significantly more likely to rely on public transport, especially buses, which allow them to ‘trip-chain’ (i.e. make multiple short distances at either end of their working day) affordably.
3. Design new housing and residential developments to enable greater sharing and coordination (e.g., as in co-housing and community land trusts) in order to reduce the amount of care and domestic work required in private households at the same time as reducing resource consumption and environmental impacts.

What impact can green jobs have on the wider UK economy? What contribution can green jobs make to the UK’s economic recovery from Covid-19? How can the UK ensure high emissions are not locked-in when tackling unemployment?

21. Investing in care has the potential to deliver millions of green jobs and, help support the economic recovery from Covid-19: Investment of 2% of GDP in the care sector would create 1.4 million jobs, 2.7 times as many jobs as an equivalent investment in construction. 6.3 times as many jobs for women and 1.1 times as many for men[5] therefore significantly increasing women’s employment. 50% more can be recouped by the Treasury in direct and indirect tax revenue from investment in care than in construction.

22. Further research by Dr Jerome De Henau also finds that providing free universal childcare for all 3.1m children (40 hours a week for 48 weeks a year), would require an initial investment in 2018 prices of between 39bn (1.8% GDP) and £58bn (2.7% of GDP) - depending on wages of childcare workers. This would create between 1.4 million and 1.5 million full-time equivalent jobs, raising women’s employment rate by between 5.6 and 5.9 percentage points. Direct and indirect taxation on income and consumption has the potential to recoup between 76% and 72% of this annual investment leaving between £9bn and £16bn net funding figure. Funding is also recouped through the reduction of families claiming social security[6].

December 2020