Regional diversification and green employment in US metropolitan areas

This paper analyses whether and to what extent regional diversification enables or thwarts green employment in US Metropolitan Areas (MAs) between 2006 and 2014. The recent debate on related and unrelated variety provides the conceptual frame for our study. The main findings are two. First, unrelated diversification is a positive and significant predictor of green employment growth. Second, this effect differs across occupational categories: while unrelated variety at industry level favours the growth of mid- to low-skill green jobs, unrelated variety at occupational level favours high- to mid-skill green jobs. Overall, local related diversification has very little impact.