Green jobs and eco-innovations in European SMEs

Green jobs are a key objective of societal efforts to concretely support the long-term endeavour to reconcile sustainability and development. The present article analyses the extent to which the future growth of green jobs is influenced by microeconomic and sector/macro level factors. We conduct econometric analyses of European Small Medium Enterprise firms to assess the factors affecting the creation of green jobs in small and medium firms. We find that green product and service innovation is primarily relevant to the creation of green jobs. The interaction term between an environmental management system and product and service innovations has a positive and significant effect on the decision to hire for green jobs. We also conduct a deep analysis of the subset of firms that produce green products and services, which reveals some idiosyncratic features. This study lays the foundations for future research on the development of green skills, competences and jobs in firms as a reaction to market and policy levers.