10-033

Media contact: Jamie Swift, communications manager, 360-902-0904

OLYMPIA – More than 10 percent of forestry-related jobs are green, compared to about 3 percent for the state economy as a whole, according to a new report by the Employment Security Department.

By legislative request, the department developed a green-jobs report focusing solely on the forest-products industry. It supplements a more comprehensive report that was issued in February.

“The state Legislature’s commitment to growing a green economy in Washington makes this important research possible,” said Employment Security Commissioner Karen Lee. “Our state is setting the pace in terms of green-economy awareness and investment.”

Some key findings from the forest-products report:

• Nearly 1,500 green jobs were identified in forest-products industries, about 2 percent of all green jobs in Washington.
• The sawmill industry led all of the forest-products subgroups with 482 jobs, followed by logging, with 321 green jobs.
• The highest-paying green forest-products jobs are power distributors and dispatchers ($78,636), followed by firefighters ($64,186).
• Moderate on-the-job training is the most common level of education among the top 10 forest-products occupations.

This is Employment Security’s third green-jobs report. The 2008 green-jobs report was the first of its kind in the nation and focused solely on private-sector green jobs. The 2009 report found showed that green jobs in the private sector increased by nearly one-third from 2008 to 2009, and it added first-time estimates of public-sector green jobs in Washington.  All together, Washington had more than 99,000 green jobs in 2009.

Washington state defines a green job as one in which workers are helping to increase energy efficiency, produce renewable energy, or prevent, reduce or clean up pollution. The 2009 report revealed that about 11 percent of agricultural jobs and 15 percent of construction jobs are considered green.

###

Full report: 2009 Washington State Green Economy Jobs  Forest Products Industry report

Broadcast version

Washington’s forest-products industry has a higher percentage of green jobs than the overall work force, according to a report released today by the Employment Security Department.

While only about three percent of all jobs in the state last year were green jobs, more than ten percent of all forest-products jobs were green. 

In total, there were about 99-thousand green jobs across the entire state last year, with almost 15-hundred of them coming from the forest-products industry.

###