This study aimed to determine positive employment effects – direct and indirect – of environmental protection in Germany for 1998. It updated results of a preceding study using recent data and in addition to determining environmental employment in the “classical” environmental areas, sought to integrate further sections and resorted to methods that can be used for a unification of partial results. As a first step the study discussed the conceptual questions with regard to the employment effects of environmental protection and theoretical connections between environmental protection and employment. It needed to clarify how environmental protection can be delimited and which actors and activities should be included. After that, methodological approaches for the determination of environmental protection-related employment effects were discussed. For this purpose the most important studies and estimations in the literature were reviewed. This included estimations on sections like climate protection, integrated environmental protection and environmentally oriented services. The second emphasis of the study was the updating of the employment numbers in environmental protection for 1998. Based on delimitation conventions and estimation methods, this study used a combined supply-demand approach that aimed to give a consistent and complete picture of the employment situation related to environmental protection. According to current estimates, about 1.3 million employees in 1998 were engaged directly or indirectly in environmental protection in Germany (3.6 % of all employees). This has to be seen as a lower limit for various reasons and cannot be directly compared to the preceding study on an aggregate level. Finally, the study made proposals for suitable methods for future, short-term updates of the estimations.
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