India's outdoor workers lose 9% of income to extreme heat
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- IIED research found extreme heat caused India's outdoor informal workers to lose nearly 9% of their 2024 salary (approximately £112/$151), while workers in physically demanding sectors like agriculture, construction, and transport lost an average of 6.6%.
- India's informal sector lost an estimated 21.1 working days per year to extreme heat across 550 million workers — a burden the IIED estimates costs the economy at least £58bn, equivalent to 2% of GDP, through lost wages, worksite closures, and heat-related illness.
- Rajasthan's informal workers suffered the steepest income losses at 8.3%, in an arid desert region where prolonged heatwaves have driven a rising death toll and workers reported no relief upon returning home.
- IIED climate finance director Ritu Bharadwaj said heat is "quietly pushing these families deeper into poverty," noting that workers' food intake falls as income drops but they cannot afford to stop working, inflicting lasting health damage.
- Chronic kidney disease could affect one in 20 informal Indian workers — more than 26 million people — over years of repeated heat exposure and dehydration, according to IIED's estimates.
- Construction workers Inder and Laxmi Kumar in Gurugram each earn 800 rupees (£6) per day, fell ill three times in three months losing nearly four weeks of work, and sleep in a tarpaulin shelter inside an unfinished building with cooling that shuts off within an hour.
- Sattavir, a 38-year-old roadside laborer, worked only 8 days in two months after a heat-induced kidney infection, earning 7,000 rupees against 9,000 spent on treatment — leaving him in debt and repeatedly turned away by contractors because he "look[s] weak."
Why it matters: India's 550 million informal workers — over 90% of the national workforce — are absorbing a flat regressive tax on a climate crisis they did not cause, with the poorest sacrificing up to 9% of annual income to lost wages, medical bills, and reduced food intake. The £58bn estimated toll, equal to 2% of GDP, shows that extreme heat now functions as a structural drag comparable to a recession for workers who cannot afford to stop.
