•A study of workforce characteristics associated to environmental sustainability in US.•We compare the skills and human capital of green and non-green occupations.•Green jobs exhibit higher levels of education, work experience and job training.•Green jobs use higher levels of cognitive and interpersonal skills. This paper elaborates an empirical analysis of labour force characteristics that emerge as a response to the growing importance of environmental sustainability. Using data on the United States we compare green and non-green occupations to detect differences in terms of skill content and of human capital. Our empirical profiling reveals that green jobs use more intensively high-level cognitive and interpersonal skills compared to non-green jobs. Green occupations also exhibit higher levels of standard dimensions of human capital such as formal education, work experience and on-the-job training. While preliminary, our exploratory exercise seeks to call attention to an underdeveloped theme, namely the labour market implications associated with the transition towards green growth.