Improving the resilience of the UK labour force in a 1.5°C world

Climate change is already having a measurable impact on labour forces across the globe, with far reaching implications for economic growth, in addition to worker health, firm profitability, poverty and inequality, food security and more. This study quantifies the impacts of heat stress on the UK labour force, focusing on labour supply, labour productivity, the health of workers, and the extent to which, and how, adaptation and adaptive capacity are reducing the negative impacts of extreme heat.

The authors collected data during the UK summer of 2024, just after a period of anomalous heat, surveying over 2,000 people in the labour force, when their recollection of the heat episode was fresh in their minds. The results clearly show that workers do perceive their health to be harmed by heat stress, and workers and employers rely on a wide range of adaptation measures to protect their health and productivity that are at least partially effective.

Key points for decision-makers

• This study provides one of the first rigorous and granular empirical analyses of how heat stress is affecting the UK labour force.
• The results suggest that a 1°C positive temperature anomaly from the long-term average increased the probability of a worker reducing their hours by 9.9% and their effort by 9.5%.
• However, for workers who received advanced alerts of heat episodes, those probabilities were 6.2% and 6.7% respectively, suggesting that adaptation is only partially effective.
• In the case of worker health, advance alerts that a heat episode was coming reduced the probability of workers reporting adverse health effects from the heat by approximately 5 percentage-points. Early-warning systems have the potential to reduce losses in labour supply by two-thirds.
• The paper’s analysis is timely and necessary as there is little detailed understanding of workers’ adaptation to heat extremes, or of the effect of interventions such as early warning systems and alerts. Further, the UK does not have a statutory maximum working temperature; and most economic models exclude adaptation, leaving policymakers, workers and employers with insufficient guidance on where to focus their adaptation efforts to maximise health and economic benefits.