A new report offers more ammunition in the never-ending
debate over green jobs.

Next 10, a San Francisco nonprofit, published a survey
Wednesday that shows that California’s “core green economy” grew more
than
three times as fast as the state’s old brown economy between 2008 and
2009. It’s a trend that resembles the boom in software jobs since 2005.

“The green job data is significant because these jobs are growing in
every region across the state, outpacing other vital sectors, and
generating
business across the supply chain,” F. Noel Perry, Next 10’s founder,
said in a statement. “There are very few business sectors in a
state as large as California that employ people across every region. The
emergence of this vibrant Core Green Economy can be attributed to
California’s
history of innovation, as well as our forward-looking energy and energy
efficiency policies.”

Relying on state employment data, Next 10 calculates that
some 174,000 Californians are employed in the core green economy.

“These ‘green’ jobs identified across the economy include existing
occupations with new tasks such as a laborer who carefully dismantles materials
for recycling purposes and architects who design energy efficient buildings,”
the report’s authors wrote. “These jobs also include new occupations such as solar installers,
biomass collectors, and wind turbine technicians.”