Climate Tech Salary Survey Results
More than any other month, January is when employees are most likely to think about changing jobs (almost one in five, according to Glassdoor). January is also a time for New Year’s resolutions. As a result, as 2024 kicks off, climate recruiters are bracing for a record year of moves into our field.
More people than ever are quitting their jobs to work in the climate sector or moving to protest climate inaction at their current place of employment. (As a side note, these facts present important arguments for business leaders and fiduciaries against ESG backlash. For if companies cannot recruit, they cannot function, and thus ESG becomes business critical.)
Women+ in Climate Tech’s salary survey helps career seekers with data for negotiations, and employers with data for benchmarking. The data can also serve to hold the emerging climate tech industry accountable to the tenets of fairness and social responsibility that we collectively, as an industry, espouse.
Our survey was conducted between January and June of 2023 using Qualtrics, with analysis and modeling conducted in SPSS. Survey respondents came from sectors and companies of various sizes, and all identified as working within the fields of climate tech, environmental, social and governance (ESG), or sustainability. Respondents were also relatively evenly distributed in terms of years of experience.
Survey respondents came from sectors and companies of various sizes, and were relatively evenly distributed in terms of years of experience. Respondents with master’s degrees command the highest salaries, and years of experience directly correlates to salary level. In addition, the gap between average salaries of respondents who identify as white versus those who identify as people of color is $21,000 (more detail on this later).
A significant percentage of respondents earned $200,000 or more. While mostly professionals with 10 or more years of experience, there were a significant number of high earners with less than 10 years of experience (and in some cases, less than 5). Those who are self-employed are the least likely to be in the high-earning cohort, followed by those in midsize businesses (201-500 employees).
The third company cohort, the least likely to contain high earners, is the one most well-represented in our survey—emerging enterprises (2-50 employees). These are the climate tech startups, and their inability to pay high or market-rate salaries may make recruiting difficult. This, in turn, will hamper the promise of climate tech to innovate, scale, and meet the skyrocketing expectations of a warming planet.
Of course, our survey only covers salary and bonuses, not stock/equity, the ‘carrot’ commonly used by startups to supplement lower salaries. If, however, the commonly known stat—that 90% of all startups fail early on—applies to climate tech, that carrot begins to look more like a badly cooked Brussels sprout (i.e., less attractive).
Another challenge for the emerging climate tech industry is its susceptibility to external shocks. In the case of the data displayed above, our survey happened to open roughly six weeks before and after the March 10th crash of Silicon Valley Bank, known to have been the bank-of-record for countless climate tech startups. The data shows a marked reduction in job security sentiment by respondents in the months post-crash, which is likely to be a direct result of the crash.
Aside from the unexpected, the next potential external shock to climate tech could arrive in the form of a leadership change after the 2024 presidential election. This could lead to the unraveling of government funding and a shrinking of the ESG market. Women+ in Climate Tech’s February webinar, Democracy and Decarbonization, will address this risk in more detail, as well as explore potential solutions.
As mentioned earlier, reported salaries differed by respondent racial identity. While we did not have the quantity of respondents to statistically differentiate between multiple categories of racial or gender identity (we hope that future surveys will enable us to do this), the data does provide a high-level view of respondents by two broad categories and hints at significant inequities, especially in certain industries.
Business, by far the largest contingent of survey respondents (38.8%) appears to be doing the best job when it comes to equitable pay as it relates to racial identity.
The data indicates that the finance industry (representing 12.6% of respondents) appears to be making strides when it comes to equal pay. However, the highest-paid roles in the field are still dominated by those who identify as white.
Perhaps the most startling finding is the pay disparities, by racial inequity, revealed in nonprofits.
An explanation of why pay inequity is so stark in climate tech nonprofits is beyond the scope of this analysis, but such pay disparity is recognized by those who study the not-for-profit industry as a whole. Nevertheless, this data should serve as a wake-up call to nonprofit leaders and funders alike; it appears that climate nonprofits could benefit from greater scrutiny, particularly on their pay practices.
Conversely, the survey appears to reveal potential progress in business and finance on pay parity when it comes to racial identity in climate tech. Does this point to progress? If so, can progress be credited, at least in part, to investor pressure and willingness/recognition of the necessity in climate tech to recruit and retain more employees of color, at least in business and finance? More data is needed to reach a conclusion on these issues and many more. Stay tuned for more surveys from our network.
Our sincere thanks to all survey respondents, the volunteer support from social scientist and professor Paul Whiteley, and communications experts Amanda Ferrari and John Hellerman.
