India registers 140% jump in EV skill acquisition in five years: LinkedIn

India saw the biggest jump in EV skill acquisition as the country’s auto workforce readies for a rapid transition to electric vehicles over the coming years, according to a report by LinkedIn.

“India, where 5.1% of auto workers now have EV skills, experienced the greatest five-year jump from 2018 to 2023 (140%),” says the Global Green Skills Report 2023.

This comes at a time when global demand for EVs is up. There are now 16.5 million electric cars on the roads, with EV accounting for 10% of global car sales, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

In the U.S., China, and certain European countries, the share of electric car sales nearly doubled from 2020 to 2021.

“In response to this shift, automotive industry workers are increasingly adding relevant green skills to their LinkedIn profiles — and the industry is hiring larger shares of workers who are equipped with these skills. Across all countries we examined, the share of auto workers with EV skills (a subset of green skills) rose by a median of 62% between 2018 and 2023,” the LinkedIn report says.

The median share of automotive workers with EV skills today is 3.5%. Sweden, the U.K., and Germany are global leaders in terms of the share of auto workers with EV skills (8.1%, 7.3%, and 6.2%, respectively, according to the report. Even these relatively mature EV markets have witnessed about 50% growth in the share of auto workers with green skills from 2018 to 2023, it says.

The U.S. lags behind other auto manufacturing leaders in EV skill acquisition, with 3.7% of auto workers possessing EV skills — about half of the percentage of the UK, shows the report. “This could change, as emissions regulations are tightened and the Inflation Reduction Act takes hold. While the Inflation Reduction Act aims to spur domestic US economic growth, it covers certain production and manufacturing activities in Canada and Mexico — reflecting the importance of a robust North American supply chain for EVs,” the report explains.

Notably, Canada and Mexico are among the less-mature EV markets that have seen annualised growth of greater than 14% per year between 2018 and 2023 in the share of auto workers with EV skills. Turkey, Spain, and India also fall into this category.

While the automotive industry is hiring more workers with EV-related green skills, what’s less obvious, but equally important, is that other industries are increasingly seeking out these workers, too. This trend is driven by the need to support the transition to EVs — for example, by creating vehicle charging stations and factoring EVs into energy demand management, the report says.

The presence of EV-related green skills among workers in EV-adjacent industries, like utilities and electric power transmission, is greatest in the US. Sweden, however, is posting the sharpest increase in this regard. In both countries, the growth is being driven by a combination of consumer demand and governmental policies that incentivize the development of EV-charger networks.