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March 23 (UPI) -- Pew Research Center said Monday that jobs focused on curbing greenhouse gas emissions and adopting new technologies have boosted demand for analytical skills. The green economy's focus on cutting pollution has created new jobs, the Pew Research Center said in a statement based on its new analysis of federal government job-skills data. It has also changed skill requirements of some existing occupations.
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A couple examples of new jobs created by the green economy are biostatisticians and intelligence analysts.
The green economy has also increased demand for mechanical skills, including maintenance and repairing, which has otherwise decreased in recent decades as the number of U.S manufacturing jobs has declined.
The focus on reusable resources has also boosted existing engineering and production jobs that require mechanical proficiency.
Among the changes, the Pew Research Center found a common thread in the most valued skills was the need for "fundamental skills," including active listening, speaking, critical thinking and reading comprehension. And the skill most in demand was active listening, which means the ability to give full attention, take the time to understand, ask questions and not interrupt at inopportune times.
Furthermore, the most significant difference in older and new jobs was the importance of analytical skills.
"Several new jobs, such as web administrators and data warehousing specialists, have a great need for programming skills," the PRC statement said.
In particular, the need for programming skills was 34 percent higher on average in newer occupations than older occupations, according to PRC research.
The PRC analysis was based on data from the government's Occupational Information Network (O*Net).
The O*Net assesses the importance of 35 job skills on a scale of 1, not important, to 5, extremely important. It currently classified 199 occupations as "green occupations," and 71 of those are classified as "new and emerging, such as biofuels production, solar energy systems engineers and climate change analysts.
