Climate change and the South African labour market

Joseph Gozoya and Anton Reinicke

No wp-2026-82, WIDER Working Paper Series from World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER)

Abstract: Understanding worker-level adaptation to climate shocks requires long-term, large-scale data, which is rare in developing economies. This paper addresses this gap by studying the impacts of drought in South Africa, linking granular meteorological data (1981-2023) with a unique decade-long employer-employee administrative panel covering 11 million individuals. While long-term sectoral shifts are minimal, we exploit worker-level variation in event study models to identify significant short-run disruptions.

Keywords: Climate change; Labour market dynamics; Worker mobility; Labour market; Administrative data; South Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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