Heat, health, and adaptation in the UK labour force

Climate change is already having a measurable impact on labour forces across the globe, with far reaching implications for economic growth, worker health and productivity, firm profitability, poverty and inequality, and food security, to name but a few. This study quantifies UK workers’ perceptions of the impacts of heat on their health and the extent to which and how adaptation measures reduce the negative impacts of extreme heat. We collected data during the UK 2024 and 2025 summers, just after periods of anomalous heat, surveying over 2,000 people each year in the UK labour force when their recollection of the heat episode was fresh in their memories. Using microeconometric analysis and controlling for a rich set of demographic, occupational, and adaptation covariates, our results clearly show that workers perceive their health to be harmed by anomalously high temperatures, and both workers and employers rely on a wide range of adaptation measures to protect their health. However, these measures are only partially effective. For example, a 1 C positive temperature anomaly from the long-term average on average increased the probability of a worker reducing their hours by 9.9% and their effort by 9.5%; but for those workers who received advanced alerts of heat episodes, those probabilities are 6.2% and 6.7%, respectively. Advanced heat alerts also reduced the probability of workers reporting adverse health effects by approximately 5%-points.