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For Immediate Release
January, 13 2022, 11:15am EDT
Contact:
UCS Climate and Energy Media Manager Ashley Siefert Nunes, asiefert@ucsusa.org
Peer-reviewed Study Finds Extreme Heat Could Threaten $55.4 Billion Annually in Outdoor Worker Earnings by Midcentury
Nation, States Lack Mandatory Standards to Keep Workers Safe as Extreme Heat Days Expected to Quadruple
WASHINGTON
Between now and 2065, climate change is projected to quadruple U.S. outdoor workers' exposure to hazardous heat conditions, jeopardizing their health and placing up to $55.4 billion of their earnings at risk annually if no action is taken to reduce global warming emissions, according to an analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) in collaboration with the University of California Merced released on a preprint server in August and published today in the peer-reviewed journal Elementa.
The study comes on the same day that NOAA and NASA released new data showing 2021 was the sixth hottest year on record.
"The last eight years have been the eight hottest on record--an alarming trend that shows no signs of slowing down," said Dr. Rachel Licker, study author and a senior climate scientist at UCS. "More extremely hot days have left and will continue to leave outdoor workers vulnerable to heat-related illnesses and even death. To limit future extreme heat, policymakers must drastically act to rein in global warming emissions across all economic sectors, beginning with passing the Build Back Better Act."
UCS analysis also found that nationally by midcentury, assuming no reduction in global warming emissions:
- For approximately 18.4 million outdoor workers in the United States, extreme heat would put an average of seven or more workdays at risk annually; roughly 3 million workers have experienced this level of risk historically.
- Outdoor workers in construction and extraction occupations are projected to face the highest total earnings at risk due to extreme heat at about $14.4 billion annually, followed by those in installation, maintenance and repair occupations at about $10.8 billion annually.
- The average outdoor worker risks losing more than $1,700 in annual earnings due to extreme heat, though workers in the 10 hardest-hit counties risk losing nearly $7,000 per year on average.
- The average outdoor worker in installation, maintenance, repair and protective service occupations stands to lose the most annual income at approximately $2,200 due to extreme heat.
- Adjusting work schedules to coincide with cooler hours and reducing workloads to light levels would ensure most workers would lose fewer than seven days of work per year on average.
"While there are suggested guidelines, the United States doesn't yet have enforceable national heat-safety standards to protect outdoor workers during extreme heat," said Dr. Kristina Dahl, study author and a senior climate scientist at UCS. "Without additional protections, the risks will only grow in the decades ahead as climate change worsens, leaving the roughly 32 million outdoor workers in our country to face a brutal choice: their health or their jobs."
To view the full national press release for this analysis, which includes more quotes from report authors; methodology details; noteworthy state- and county-level findings; disproportionate impacts on workers of color; and possible policy solutions, click here. If you have any questions or would like to arrange an interview with a study author, please contact UCS Climate and Energy Media Manager Ashley Siefert Nunes.
Additional Resources:
To view the PDF for the UCS report "Too Hot to Work" released in August 2021, click here.
Spreadsheets with data are available by state and by county. National data results can be found here.
To use the interactive mapping tool, click here. The map, which becomes more detailed when you zoom in, allows you to learn more about outdoor workers' exposure to extreme heat and the corresponding economic implications by county.
For all other materials, including state-specific press releases, corresponding blogs, a related "Got Science" podcast episode, and Spanish-language materials, click here.
The Union of Concerned Scientists is the leading science-based nonprofit working for a healthy environment and a safer world. UCS combines independent scientific research and citizen action to develop innovative, practical solutions and to secure responsible changes in government policy, corporate practices, and consumer choices.
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US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth first unveiled the plan earlier this month, telling reporters: "Trump has drawn a new strategic map, from Greenland to the Gulf of America to the Panama Canal and its surrounding countries. At the Department of War we call this strategic map the Greater North America."
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Graeme Garrard, a Canadian professor at Cardiff University in Wales, said Monday on social media in response to Hegseth's comments: "By 'Greater North America' he means 'Greater United States. The US is now and has long been a menace and threat to the sovereignty and independence of its hemispheric neighbors."
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Based on the biblical boundaries of ancient Jewish kingdoms, Greater Israel is rooted in the supremacist supposition that the Abrahamic deity figure God promised the Jews all of the lands between the Nile and Euphrates.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza—and other prominent right-wing Israelis support the Greater Israel vision and are working to make it a reality by accelerating the illegal settler colonization and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, preparing to annex the dwindling Palestinian territories, and planning to occupy—perhaps permanently—parts of Syria and Lebanon.
For nearly two centuries, claims of divine favor have also underpinned US expansionism, most famously expressed in Manifest Destiny and mid-19th century plans to annex lands "from the Arctic to the Tropic." This notion drove the US conquest of half of Mexico, as well as later takeovers of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti. The US also took control over the Panama Canal, which it built at the cost of thousands of laborers' lives, most of them from Barbados and other West Indies isles.
"It is part of the great law of progress that the weak should give way to the strong, and that the superior should displace the inferior races," one New Orleans newspaper opined in 1848.
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Bloomberg reported Monday that before adopting the law, which "applies a 9.9% levy on the roughly 30,000 taxpayers in the state who make more than $1 million a year," Washington was one of just nine states without an income tax
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Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson has officially signed into law a new tax on millionaires.The 9.9% tax on income above $1 million is projected to raise up to $3 billion in 2029 after it takes effect in 2028.That money will go towards public education, child care, and expanding the state's EITC.
— ITEP (@itep.org) March 30, 2026 at 1:25 PM
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Washington makes history today! Gov. Bob Ferguson just signed the Millionaires Tax into law!For too long, the wealthiest few have paid a smaller share while working families carried the load.
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— Washington State Democrats (@wadems.org) March 30, 2026 at 1:28 PM
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According to KUOW, during the bill signing event in Olympia that featured remarks from not only the governor but also the bill sponsors, a small business owner, and a tech executive, Ferguson acknowledged that "there's going to be a public conversation around this in the days and weeks and months ahead, as there should be of something of this historic nature."
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Leading international human rights groups as well as organizations in Israel swiftly demanded the repeal of a law passed by the Israeli Knesset on Monday that makes death by hanging the default punishment for Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks on Israelis—a law that one group called "discriminatory by design."
Those were the words of the Association of Civil Rights in Israel, which petitioned the country's Supreme Court minutes after lawmakers passed an amendment to the federal penal law, "Death Penalty for Terrorists," in a vote of 62-48.
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The Association of Civil Rights was joined by groups including Amnesty International, which has spoken out forcefully against the legislation in recent months, in demanding the death penalty law be repealed.
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She added that the law was passed weeks after the Israeli military attorney general dropped all charges against five Israel Defense Forces soldiers accused of raping a Palestinian prisoner—"a decision celebrated by the prime minister and several ministers."
“It speaks volumes to the extent of Israel’s dehumanization of Palestinians that this law has passed" after those charges were dropped, said Guevara-Rosas. "For years, we have seen an alarming pattern of apparent extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings of Palestinians—with the perpetrators also enjoying near-total impunity. This new law which allows for state-sanctioned executions is a culmination of such policies.”
Celebrations were seen among Netanyahu's top ministers once again on Monday, with National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir—whose Otzma Yehudit Party initially introduced the amendment—seen clutching a bottle of champagne after the passage was announced.
Historian Assal Rad noted that much of the international coverage of the bill's passage has used "procedural language to sanitize the story and make it sound legitimate."
The law, however, "is just another way for Israel to kill Palestinians," she said.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor warned that "the most dangerous aspect of the new law lies in its application within a judicial system that lacks any guarantees of a fair trial for Palestinians."
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"Combined with a lack of judicial independence and integrity in proceedings, applying the death penalty in this context cannot be considered a legitimate judicial measure," the organization added. "Instead, it constitutes an arbitrary deprivation of life, in direct violation of fundamental principles of international human rights law."
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