Staff are on monitor for one more dangerously scorching summer season, however the guidelines we have to shield them aren’t as much as the duty. Hotter temperatures, whether or not gradual or sudden, have a damaging impact on staff throughout a wide range of industries—outside and indoors—which have a downward pull on productiveness.
The early months of 2026 have been the hottest on file and capped the warmest 12-month interval ever recorded. To speak about what protections staff want, David Michaels and R. Jinsung Park joined me to discuss what rising warmth means for folks, locations, and our financial system.
As temperatures progressively increase, the variety of recorded accidents—which frequently don’t account for all of the accidents that occur—has elevated. From 1999 to 2023, the variety of heat-related deaths in the US increased 117%, with 2023 being the best and 2022 being the second highest.
Temperatures Up, Productiveness Down
The results of utmost warmth lengthen past employee well being. Rising temperatures additionally cut back productiveness, creating financial prices that ripple by way of total industries. Excessive warmth obstructs productiveness. Larger productiveness increases a employee’s worth to their employer and might enhance bargaining energy—the flexibility to barter working situations, advantages, and wages.
Throughout sure labor-intensive manufacturing industries, for each diploma over 80° Fahrenheit, productiveness drops an estimated 4%. For indoor staff, as temperatures exceed 77° Fahrenheit, productiveness drops an estimated 5-7%. For the 2.4 billion staff worldwide uncovered to warmth stress, productiveness can drop as much as 3% for every diploma above 68° Fahrenheit.
Round one-in-five People within the workforce works outside. Between now and 2065, U.S. staff’ publicity to warmth is predicted to quadruple.
The Value of Inaction
The productiveness drag from excessive warmth is another excuse why ignoring the specter of local weather change will proceed to constrain financial progress. Globally, from 2000 to 2023, the variety of workdays uncovered to extreme warmth throughout heatwaves elevated by 23%. Since 1960, the common U.S. warmth wave season in a metropolis has elevated by 46 days, whereas the common warmth wave in a U.S. city space now lasts 4 days.
By 2030, extra warmth and ensuing compromised work capability is predicted to price the worldwide financial system $2.4 trillion. In the US, financial losses as a result of warmth have surged 70% from 2001 to 2023. From 2001-2023, heat-related productiveness losses price the development trade $38 billion, whereas smaller, rural counties misplaced 3% of their GDP.
Expertise, local weather, and different exterior components will alter the composition of the workforce. We will adapt to guard staff (joining different economies and competitors) or reside with the brand new downward pull on U.S. productiveness.
Warmth Protections on the Floor
Regardless of rising proof of the dangers posed by office warmth publicity, federal protections stay restricted. Earlier this yr, the Trump administration allowed the Biden-era OSHA heat protection program protecting an estimated 36 million workers to run out with out finalizing a federal warmth normal. The administration additionally minimize roughly 85% of the Nationwide Institute for Occupational Security and Well being workforce, leaving employee warmth protections more and more depending on state motion—but solely seven states presently have heat-protection requirements in place.
In 2024, California approved new office guidelines to guard indoor staff from excessive warmth. The rule establishes temperature thresholds and requires cooling areas and adjusted schedules and gear. Prompted by streaks of triple-digit temperatures and surges of wildfires spanning 1000’s of acres, the warmth safety applies to an estimated 1.4 million and goals to cut back warmth accidents within the office by 40% by 2030.
Between 2016 to 2021, annual heat-related complaints in Nevada averaged around 133; by way of just 9 months of 2024, 467 complaints have been filed. In the summertime of 2024, Las Vegas confronted 74 days of temperatures exceeding 100° Fahrenheit, whereas Reno confronted 4 105° days in a row. As of April 2025, beneath Nevada’s Occupational Security and Well being Administration, any employer with greater than ten staff (and explosive producers of any measurement) must conduct job hazard analyses and supply protecting measures and worker coaching.
24% of Texas’s total workforce is out of doors staff. In 2023, Home Invoice 2127 preempted native municipal ordinances that “mandated water and relaxation breaks for development staff,” however the state remained beneath federal OSHA’s Normal Responsibility Clause. The rollback of native ordinances was dominated unconstitutional in a decrease courtroom however stays unresolved; by midcentury, Texas out of doors staff are estimated to lose 27 workdays as a result of excessive warmth and $12.2 billion in whole annual earnings.
It’s getting scorching out right here. It’s an empirical fact that minimizing emissions and retaining world temperatures from persevering with to rise will make it doable for staff to maintain doing their jobs nicely.
Heather Boushey
Professor of Follow
Heather Boushey is a professor of follow on the Kleinman Heart. Boushey served within the Biden administration as a member of the Council of Financial Advisers and chief economist to the President’s Investing in America cupboard.
