Jobs, jobs, jobs: what color is your biochute?

BIO says that up to 800,000 direct and indirect jobs could be created in advanced biofuels by 2022.

What jobs are there for you?

Recently, former LA Mayor Richard Riordan outlined the priorities. “Let’s look at the future. Whatever solution we have for our economy, the basic thing is jobs, jobs, jobs.”

One of the bright spots – by almost universal acclaim – is the prospect for clean energy jobs. But what does that exactly mean for you?

In today’s special Biofuels Digest Report on Jobs, we look at actual hiring data from the Biofuels Digest job board, plus BIO’s authoritative report on the projected economic impact of the expansion of advanced biofuels.

Our goal? To give you a personal roadmap – the when and what of job creation and job opportunity.

How many?

In a landmark 2009 study of the Renewable Fuel Standard and its impact, “US Economic Impact of Advanced Biofuels Production: Perspectives to 2030,” Bio-era projected that 807,000 direct and indirect jobs would be created by 2022 – direct jobs accounting for 190,000 of the total.

Feedstock production and construction, unsurprisingly, dominate the jobs picture, with 87,000 and 67,000 jobs.
The remaining 36,000 split between direct processing, R&D and distribution – 23,000, 7000, and 6000, respectively.

The full BIO study is here.

What types of jobs?

Here at the Digest, we have been running our jobs board for going on two years – primarily in this early stage of the industry, carrying jobs related to the build-out of processing companies, and for R&D.

In the long term, we expect the hot jobs and entreprenurial opportunities to be in areas such as : baling systems and sales, ag residue pickup, storage and aggregation, algae protein shipping & distribution, pellet sales & distribution, forest slash pickup and storage, grease pickup, truck stops near integrated biorefineries, regional business development – third party services,
road maintenance and security for integrated biorefineries, RIN pricing services, and low-cost cellulosic sugar sales & distribution.

To date, we have carried 76 different job designations, and we found it fascinating to look at the jobs that you looked at (views), compared to the jobs that elicited an application (via web or email).  Note: for privacy reasons, the Digest does not track, or analyze individual replies, just aggregate data.

Here are the jobs you viewed, in rank order by the level of interest you showed. This is indexed – where 100 means “average interest,” 200 means “double the average,” 50 means “half the average” and so on.

Ranked by jobs viewed

We note that, of the top 10, five were in engineering/project development, two in science, two in sales & marketing, and one in feedstock operations.

Ranked by jobs applied for

Here are the same job titles, indexed this time according to applications, not views. These are the jobs that, after review, you decided to go for. Again, indexed to a base of 100.

We note that, of the top 10, one was the CEO job, three were in engineering/project development, one in science, three in sales & marketing, one in biorefinery operations, and one in feedstock operations.

There was a clearly stronger uptick of interest in the jobs on the sales and management side, vs the science and engineering jobs. To us, that reflects the supply/demand differences between the two areas – clearly, engineers who understand bioenergy can afford to be more picky. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, at least, expects it to shake out this way – projecting that “Biochemist,” along with “biophysicist” will rank as the 9th fastest growing job in the US through 2018.