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, and food security, to name but a few. 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 is reducing the negative impacts of extreme heat. We collected data in 2024 during the UK summer, just after a period of anomalous heat, surveying over 2,000 people in the UK labour force, when their recollection of the heat episode was fresh in their memories. Using microeconometric analysis and controlling for a rich set of demographic, occupational, and adaptation covariates, our 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 that are at least partially effective. Our 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 are 6.2% and 6.7% respectively, suggesting that adaptation is only partially effective. In the case of worker health, advanced alerts reduced the probability of workers reporting adverse health effects due to heat episodes by approximately 5 percentage-points.