ILO Studies Warn Heat Stress Threatens Jobs
Six-country studies by the International Labor Organization project 80 million full-time jobs lost to heat stress by 2030.
Updated on Nov. 2, 2026 in Employment
The International Labor Organization presented multinational studies on October 29 covering Ethiopia, Ghana, Lebanon, the Maldives, Senegal, and Sri Lanka. The studies assess how excessive heat affects work, employment, and economic output in each country.
Why it matters
An estimated 2.4 billion workers worldwide are exposed to excessive heat, and nearly 19,000 work-related deaths are attributed to it each year. The risks are particularly high in countries with large outdoor and labor-intensive workforces, where heat stress is a major threat to sectors such as textiles.
The studies project 80 million full-time jobs lost to heat stress by 2030, with Ethiopia facing a projected $33.3 billion annual GDP loss by 2040. The extraction does not detail how these projections would shift under alternative policy interventions.
The players
International Labor Organization
The United Nations agency that sets international labor standards and produced the multinational heat stress studies.
The details
The studies assess job and GDP losses under low-emissions and high-emissions scenarios. By 2040, more than one million workers will be exposed to heat in Ethiopia, and by 2060 high-emission scenarios could produce job losses of 5 to 6 million full-time equivalent jobs there.
Timeline
October 29: ILO presents the multinational heat stress studies.
2030: 80 million full-time jobs projected lost to heat stress.
2040: Projected job and GDP losses under the low-emissions scenario.
2060: Projected greater losses under high-emission scenarios.
Macro View
The ILO's six-country studies extend its prior labor research by quantifying heat stress as a macroeconomic risk. They frame the problem through projected job and GDP losses rather than health outcomes alone.
Outdoor and labor-intensive workers face the most direct exposure to excessive heat, with 2.4 billion people affected worldwide. The projected losses could reduce available full-time work in heat-exposed industries such as textiles.
The takeaway
Heat stress is increasingly a workplace economic issue, not only a health one, and employers and workers in exposed industries face rising costs. Tracking how heat-related job losses develop will show whether protective measures keep pace with projected risks.
Further reading
For broader context on how work and wages are shifting, explore Employment coverage.
Source note: This article includes information reported by Modaes.
