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Heat negatively affects human health and can lead to poorer work performance (reduced productivity) or lower number hours committed to work (labour supply), especially in highly exposed sectors such as agriculture, forestry, mining and quarrying, or construction. Productivity suffers from workers needing to slow down pace of work and to take additional breaks to rehydrate and cool down. When it is too hot to work, labour supply hours decrease, particularly for jobs that require physical activity.

Caveats

The main caveat is that the labour supply data is available only at the annual level, hence within year heterogeneity cannot be accounted for.

 

Reference information

Websites:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(22)00197-9/fulltext
Source:

Publication:

van Daalen, K. R., et al., 2022, ‘The 2022 Europe report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: towards a climate resilient future’, The Lancet Public Health 7(11), pp. E942-E965. doi: 10.1016/S2468-2667(22)00197-9.


Data sources:

  1. Climatic data: ECMWF ERA5 Land Reanalysis data. Copernicus Climate Change Service Climate Data Store
  2. Labour data: Eurostat EU Labour Force Survey data

Additional reading:

Contributor:
Lancet Countdown in Europe

Published in Climate-ADAPT: Dec 5, 2022

Date of publication:

2022

Keywords:
Heat stress, Labour, Occupational health and safety
Climate impacts:

Extreme Temperatures

Adaptation Approaches:

Observations and Scenarios, Vulnerability Assessment

Sectors:

Health

Geographic characterisation:

Europe

Health impact:

Heat

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This translation is generated by eTranslation, a machine translation tool provided by the European Commission.