After a significant flood or wildfire, there is a time when everyone believes recovery has started, the news cameras pack up, and the immediate emergency subsides. What occurs to the employees is what the cameras don’t capture. The people who discovered their shop underwater when they arrived on Monday morning. The construction workers whose site is now reduced to ash. The service staff whose whole clientele left town. When the water recedes, the catastrophe doesn’t end for them.
The slow economic bleeding that occurs after the dramatic event is the aspect of climate change that receives less attention. According to World Bank research spanning 93 economies, 43 million jobs will be lost in 49 countries alone by 2050. When you extrapolate that to all low- and middle-income countries worldwide, the number rises to 260 million. These are not hypothetical forecasts that are hidden away in a policy document. They stand in for actual people in particular locations, many of whom are already experiencing this reality.
Natural disasters have a more complicated impact on the labor market than just job loss. A region’s entire economic fabric is shattered when a disaster strikes, not just its workplaces. Businesses fire employees because they have lost clients, not just buildings. Entire customer bases are depleted by mass evacuations. The networks of transportation that employees rely on to get to work cease to operate. Skills shortages and areas of ongoing unemployment coexist in the same community even months after the original incident. Employers who are unable to find workers and individuals who are unable to find employment make for an odd and perplexing mismatch.
One particularly unsettling finding from research on communities affected by extreme weather is that workers who chose to stay put rather than evacuate frequently ended up with less money to spend than they had before the disaster. The physical devastation spreads to the economy. Everyone in the vicinity has less purchasing power when a neighborhood floods, which weakens local businesses and lowers their payroll. The ripple is long-lasting and silent.
The worst of it usually affects outdoor workers first. Emergency responders, construction workers, and agricultural laborers are examples of people whose jobs are performed outside. According to estimates from the International Labour Organization, by 2030, heat-related climate change may eliminate 136 million full-time jobs during working hours. The situation becomes more complicated when you include declining air quality due to droughts and wildfires, increased flooding, and the spread of disease vectors. How many of these losses governments are truly ready for is still unknown.
Observing how policies have responded to previous catastrophes gives the impression that reemployment and income support programs are frequently created in more tranquil times and then hurriedly implemented when a crisis strikes. A recurring pattern emerged from the OECD’s analysis of labor market reactions in six member nations following significant natural disasters: policies that are in place on paper are difficult to implement. There is damage to the infrastructure. Government agencies are overburdened. Reaching those who are most in need of reemployment assistance is frequently the most difficult.
However, a counter-narrative is emerging that merits serious consideration without exaggeration. According to the same World Bank report, by 2050, investments in climate resilience and adaptation could create 150 million jobs worldwide. Despite its disruption, the low-carbon transition is predicted to eventually create more jobs in the majority of economies. Environmental restoration, climate-proofing infrastructure, and clean energy are creating new industries. Nearly 375 million new jobs in important industries are expected to be created over the next ten years, according to the World Resources Institute.
The lack of jobs is not the issue. The issue is that the workers who are currently displaced due to climate disasters may not be the ones who will take over those jobs in the future. Access to training, skill gaps, and geographic distances all contribute to a significant obstacle. A fisherman in a coastal town that frequently experiences cyclones isn’t waiting for a nearby solar panel installation certification course to open. These shifts necessitate intentional, focused investment in worker mobility, education, and income support during the transition. Even if the math of job creation and job destruction eventually balances on paper, it doesn’t balance at the human level without it.
It’s difficult not to feel that the labor aspect of climate change is lagging behind the discussion of emissions and temperature by several years. The displacement has already taken place. The same urgency should be applied to the question of what employees will do next.
