The Green Job Phantasm
From the Sandusky (Ohio) Register, a story about the ghost of green jobs future:
EHOVE educators also want to avoid the situation Oregon City Schools is facing after 13 graduates of its renewable energy program sued the district in December.
Dawn Weinbrecht, 41, of Toledo worked in real estate for 18 years and decided to go back to school when that industry tanked. She signed up for a six-month course on wind, solar and geothermal energy at Oregon Career and Technology Center.
"We thought that this would be the new wave and that green energy jobs would be fruitful and available," Weinbrecht said. "When we signed onto the program, we were guaranteed job-shadowing experience and hands-on training."
Neither internships nor jobs materialized, according to the lawsuit….
Ohio had 35,267 jobs in the clean-energy economy in 2007, according to a report by the Pew Charitable Trusts, making the state fourth in the nation.
But green jobs still represent a small portion of the work force. Even by the broadest definition, green jobs make up only 2 percent of the economy, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Commerce.
In other news, the state of Ohio, facing a $3 billion budget deficit and higher-than-average unemployment, is pouring $6 million into subsidizing training for…green jobs. ""We are quickly putting these dollars to use to retrain Ohio workers for the new energy jobs our economy is creating," says Gov. Ted Strickland.