The Covid-19 pandemic is not the only one to damage the economy and employment around the world. Global warming, with the increasingly frequent occurrence of intense heat waves, is costly. According to a study published on January 13 in the journal Environmental Research Letters, almost 650 billion annual working hours would be lost due to intense heat. That is 400 billion additional hours compared to previous estimates, prior to 2017.
We knew that climate change was affecting the population of the planet, threatening its health and well-being, but its consequences are also important when it comes to the productivity of workers, explain the authors of this academic study, carried out under the direction of the climate science researcher, Luke A. Parsons (Duke University, USA). Over the past four decades, the number of hours not worked, due to excessive heat and humidity, has increased by at least 9% in the sectors of agricultural, forestry, fishing and even building.
Labor losses, relative to the share of the population of outdoor employment age, are highest in South, East and South-East Asia, where large numbers live. people working in agriculture. “Specifically, labor losses are most pronounced in India, which accounts for nearly half of the world’s total losses and has suffered more than four times the labor losses of the second-worst-hit country. , China “, write the authors of the study. This deficit is also correlated with the types of work carried out in the open air, with their intensity, as well as with the number of hours actually worked per day. Thus, workers in the agricultural sector worked 10 to 90 times fewer hours than those who perform light work, for example in the service sectors, and moderate work, such as in the manufacturing industry, specify the academics.
Disappearance of 155 million jobs worldwide per year
High “damp heat” – the authors include in this term “conditions that are either hot (and dry) or hot and humid enough to cause a decline in labor productivity” – should, by increasing labor loss, reduce global gross domestic product (GDP) by up to 4.0% by 2100, they estimate.
This loss of productivity again affects national economies differently, with minus 7% for India’s GDP, minus 5% for Vietnam, but minus 1.3% in China, minus 0.5% in the United States or even less 0.1% in France. The authors anticipate the loss of 155 million jobs worldwide per year, with India accounting for almost half of this loss, with 62 million jobs. “These annual losses are comparable to temporary job losses during the global shutdowns related to the Covid-19 pandemic, which would have caused losses equivalent to approximately 130 million full-time jobs during the first quarter of the pandemic according to the ‘International Labor Organization’, they write.
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