Change in Labour Capacity

This indicator has two parts. Part (1) monitors the number of outdoor workers (a population at risk) with estimates produced by WHO staff. Part (2) calculates working hours lost as a result of heat exposure in four sectors: agriculture, construction, manufacturing, and service. It monitors potential hours lost by linking Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (including temperature, humidity and solar radiation) with the amount of energy expended by workers through the typical metabolic rate of workers. It then combines this calculation with the proportion of people working over 15 years old in each of the four sectors in each country to estimate the potential work hours lost per year.

Part (1) The percentage and number of outdoor workers for the estimation years 2000-25 were estimated, assuming a linear trend for these variables over time. These variables may change non-linearly, and applying a linear function can lead to extreme values (e.g., an estimated percentage of outdoor workers of <10.0% or >90.0%), especially when input data are sparse for a country/area. Workers in the formal economy were captured by all Labour Force Surveys used to produce the WHO/ILO Joint Estimates, but only some of these surveys also captured workers in the informal economy (e.g., South Africa’s Quarterly Labour Force Surveys).

Part (2) The numbers and percentages of workers captures those in the formal economy for regions and countries, unpaid work, to which women often dedicate more time than men, is not accounted for. The distribution of agricultural, construction manufacturing, and service sector workers used are country averages, applied evenly to the population of each grid cell, thus not accounting for sub-national variation in industry sector.