The impact of weather shocks on employment outcomes: evidence from South Africa

Abstract

Climate change is increasing the frequency of extreme weather events, such as drought and heat waves. In this paper, we assess the impact of drought and high temperatures on the employment outcomes of working-age individuals in South Africa between 2008 and 2017. We merge high-resolution weather data with detailed individual-level survey data on labor market outcomes, and estimate causal impacts using a fixed effects framework. We find that increases in the occurrence of drought reduce overall employment. These effects are concentrated in the tertiary sector, amongst informal workers, and in provinces with a higher reliance on tourism. Taken together, our results suggest that the impacts of climate change will be felt unequally by South Africa's workers.

The Impact of Climate Change on Work Lessons for Developing Countries

“…employment in these areas declined by 1.2 percentage points, and transport sector employment declines by 0.3 percentage points, for a 1-standard deviation increase in measured drought (Gray et al, 2023).…”

The Effects of Extreme Climate Events on Green Technology Innovation in Manufacturing Enterprises

“…Extreme climate events. Considering various types of extreme climate events, we focus on the two most studied types of extreme climate events in the literature (Gray et al, 2023;Li et al, 2021;Martin et al, 2011;Rao et al, 2022;Zhang et al, 2018), i.e., extreme temperature events and extreme precipitation events. Furthermore, extreme temperature events are divided into extreme heat waves (denoted by Extreme Heat) and extreme cold waves (denoted by Extreme Cold).…”

The labour force in a changing climate: Research and policy needs

“…Warming affects the number of hours worked (labour supply) [1][2][3][4][5], output during these working hours (labour productivity) [6], and labour capacity [7][8][9]. This in turn has implications for economic output, and general and occupational health [10,11], absenteeism [12], and labour rights. There is evidence that outdoor and indoor manual/manufacturing workers are particularly affected by heat stress, with the impacts being highest on outdoor workers (agriculture and construction [1,2,7,8,13].…”