What we learned from analyzing 1,500 green job salaries

As more workers across sectors express their desire for pay transparency, we are continuing our ongoing effort of encouraging recruiters to include salary information in their Devex job postings, which we make highly visible to job seekers. With the aim of fostering a salary-transparent culture in global development, we offer recruiters several options to share salary ranges of their job postings and analyze trends for both job and talent seekers. The number of job postings with salary data has increased by nearly 14 percentage points on the Devex job board in the last two years — from 17.3% in 2021 to 30.8% in 2023. Our latest analysis focuses on salaries that have been shared with us for climate and environment-related jobs posted on Devex’s job board in the last 12 months. Our analysis includes nearly 1,500 positions by almost 200 organizations. Here’s what we found in terms of which organizations have been the most salary-transparent, which roles have been in demand, and what development professionals can expect to earn based on region and experience level. Who are the most salary-transparent hiring organizations? Unsurprisingly, government agencies and multilateral organizations are the most transparent climate employers, representing 38% of the total climate jobs with salaries in our job board in 2023. This is true for most positions regardless of the sector, as those organizations have standard and public pay scales for each of their positions. Examples of these organizations are the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, United States Agency for International Development, and U.N. Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre, or UNEP-WCMC. Next in line are NGOs, which represent 34% of the climate positions with salaries posted within this year. Examples include the Environmental Defense Fund and Ceres, the Earthworm Foundation, and the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group. At a much lower scale, development consultancies and service providers posted 7.2% of the salary-transparent roles, followed by research institutes, which represented 6.4% of the related postings. Among the first, we found some roles posted by Chemonics International and Tetra Tech, and among the former, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the think tank, ODI. What climate talent are they looking for? This distribution by type of organization well explains why over 60% of the climate jobs advertised with salary were full-time staff positions, ahead of 39% for long- and short-term consulting positions. Most of the salary-transparent climate, environment, or natural resources positions advertised looked for middle-level professionals (42.5%), followed by senior-level (24.5%), entry-level (20%), and executive-level (11%) professionals. If we exclude those consultancies advertised with daily and hourly rate salaries and consider only jobs and consultancies that shared monthly and annual salaries, we find that the average executive-level role paid $149,361 yearly, while the average for an entry-level role was $52,450. Almost 50% of the jobs were tagged as middle-level and had an average minimum and maximum salary of $65,327 and $85,404 across geographies. Where can you find the most salary-transparent climate jobs? Without a doubt, North America is where most climate jobs with salaries have been advertised in the last year, representing more than 30% of the total jobs posted with annual and monthly salary rates. This is mostly driven by many multilateral organizations and INGOs having their headquarters in the United States. The climate salaries across career levels average $112,764 in North America, representing the third-highest salary average after Central Asia, which averages $126,562 and Eastern Europe with $113,494. Central Asia appears at the top of the list thanks to two senior environmental specialist roles at the World Bank in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, and Eastern Europe follows due to another senior World Bank position in Turkey and a senior climate and environment officer in Hungary hired by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. What were the highest-paid climate jobs? Ernst & Young — Sustainable (ESG) transformation strategy, senior manager, consulting. Maximum annual salary: $379,000. Location: Texas, United States. World Bank Group — Director, strategy and operations. Maximum annual salary: $373,200. Location: Washington, D.C., United States. International Finance Corporation — Manager, climate finance and policy. Maximum annual salary: $300,600. Location: Washington, D.C., United States. International Finance Corporation — Principal operations officer, head of secretariat – The Alliance for Green Commercial Banks. Maximum annual salary: $300,600. Location: Hong Kong. World Bank Group — Principal social development/labor specialist. Maximum annual salary: $300,600. Location: Washington, D.C., United States. Ready to stand out from the crowd and get noticed by the recruiters who matter most? Update your Devex profile and start connecting with top global development recruiters now.