Abstract
Occupational choices shape workers’ long-term earnings, well-being, and social standing, making them central to individual life trajectories and broader labor market dynamics. Workers select jobs by trading off wages and benefits against lost leisure time and expected hardships (Rosen, 1986; Maestas et al., 2023). Hardship of jobs refers to the dis-utility from job-related demands, encompassing both mental and physical strains (Lavetti, 2023). A job’s physical toll is shaped by the tasks involved, the technology used in production, and the varying conditions under which job tasks are performed. Job disamenities may thus vary over time, contributing to longer-term trends in labor supply and sectoral change (Kaplan and Schulhofer-Wohl, 2018). For many jobs, especially in construction, agriculture and some service sectors, working conditions vary substantially with outside weather conditions. Heat and cold days induce discomfort, health risks (e.g. Isen et al., 2017; Karlsson and Ziebarth, 2018; Carleton et al., 2022; Heutel et al., 2021; Barreca et al., 2016; Deschênes and Greenstone, 2011) and hampered productivity in exposed jobs (e.g., Deschenes, 2023; Kjellstrom et al., 2016). Accelerating global warming and climate change are increasing the frequency of extreme weather events, and, thus, global labor dis-utility, associated with substantial economic costs (Rode et al., 2022).
This discrete choice experiment aims to measure the importance of outdoor exposure to extreme weather in the job choice of German employees. By randomly informing survey participants about different scenarios of the potential increase in extreme weather events, we test in a subsequent discrete choice experiment whether and to what degree participants prefer indoor jobs over outdoor jobs.