---
title: "Heat and the productivity of work (research idea)"
description: "Extreme heat and heat waves appear on 47 recent papers, and temperature keywords on 208, but only 29 of those carry a productivity, labour, worker or firm keyword. As summers get hotter, how much output is lost on hot days, in which industries, and does adaptation close the gap?"
url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/heat-and-labour-productivity
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/heat-and-labour-productivity.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
date: "2026-10-23"
updated: "2026-10-23"
status: "seed"
tags: ["economics", "climate", "labor"]
keywords: ["extreme heat", "heat waves", "labor productivity"]
---

# Heat and the productivity of work

Extreme heat and heat waves appear on 47 recent papers, and temperature keywords on 208, but only 29 of those carry a productivity, labour, worker or firm keyword. As summers get hotter, how much output is lost on hot days, in which industries, and does adaptation close the gap?

## What prompted this

Since October 2025, 208 papers carry an extreme-heat, heat-wave, heat-stress or temperature keyword (105 in economics journals, 69 in AI): "extreme heat" on 34, "heat waves" on 13. Only 29 of the 208 also carry a productivity, labour, worker, output, firm or absenteeism keyword; "labor productivity" alone appears on 94 papers, mostly about other causes.

## Questions

- Using daily plant-level data, how much does output fall on days above 35°C in manufacturing, construction and agriculture, and does the loss persist into the following days?
- Do firms in hotter regions adapt (shifts, cooling, automation) so that the marginal effect of heat falls over time?
- Who bears the loss: workers through pay, firms through profits, or customers through delays?

## Data that could help

Daily production or output records from firms, weather station and reanalysis data (ERA5), and worker-level time and attendance data.

## Next step

Match daily output data from a multi-plant manufacturer to local temperatures and estimate the output loss per hot day by plant type.

## Related research activity

*The keywords this note follows, in the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals as of 2026-10-26*

| Keyword | Papers, last 30 days | Rank | Papers per month, Oct 23 – Oct 26* | Papers, last 36 months |
|---|---:|---:|---|---:|
| extreme heat | 1 | #2881 | 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 4, 3, 3, 0, 3, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 1, 5, 2, 3, 1, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 1, 3, 6, 3, 4, 0, 1, 3, 1 | 70 |
| heat waves | 1 | #2881 | 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 4, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 1, 1, 2, 2, 1, 0, 0, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0 | 31 |
| labor productivity | 3 | #776 | 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 7, 5, 9, 8, 10, 4, 13, 7, 8, 8, 8, 10, 10, 6, 10, 8, 7, 8, 11, 11, 11, 9, 8, 6, 6, 8, 7, 5, 9, 8, 3 | 245 |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Heat and the productivity of work. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 23, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/heat-and-labour-productivity

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-ideas-heat-and-labour-productivity,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Heat and the productivity of work},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/heat-and-labour-productivity}},
  urldate = {2026-10-23},
  note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).