Using data representing one-third of the world's population, we find that extreme hot and cold days cause substantial labor supply declines for weather-exposed workers, but not for weather-protected workers. With these results and a simple theoretical framework, we calculate that the value of a weather-protected job's thermal comfort varies widely globally but is worth 2.9% of annual income on average. We project that climate change will increase worker thermal discomfort by 1.8% of global GDP in 2099 under a very high emissions scenario and 0.5% under an intermediate scenario, demonstrating the importance of this new category of climate damages.
Rode, Ashwin and Baker, Rachel and Carleton, Tamma and D'Agostino, Anthony and Delgado, Michael and Foreman, Timothy and Gergel, Diana R. and Greenstone, Michael and Houser, Trevor and Hsiang, Solomon and Hultgren, Andrew and Jina, Amir and Kopp, Robert E. and Malevich, Steven B. and McCusker, Kelly and Nath, Ishan and Pecenco, Matthew and Rising, James and Yuan, Jiacan, Is Workplace Temperature a Valuable Job Amenity? Implications for Climate Change (July 01, 2024). University of Chicago, Becker Friedman Institute for Economics Working Paper No. 2024-77, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4882247 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4882247
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