Toxic wildfire smoke isn't just a major health hazard and driver of rising global temperatures — it's also a trillion-dollar pay cut for workers in the United States.

What is the tie between wildfire smoke and U.S. wages?

Analysis from Bloomberg Intelligence has estimated that from 2020 to 2024, U.S. workers in retail, wholesale, transportation, construction, mining, and agriculture lost $1.1 trillion in wages due to wildfire smoke exposure. The analysis focused on these industries due to workers' higher risks of workplace exposure to smoke.

In a recent opinion piece, Bloomberg columnist Mark Gongloff noted that this exposure can cause missed shifts and lower productivity, writing, "It's not easy to drive a truck or a bulldozer when you can't breathe."

BI's trillion-dollar estimate is based on a National Bureau of Economic Research paper, published in 2022, that found one day of exposure to wildfire smoke reduces a person's quarterly wages by about 0.1 percent. While that may not seem like a lot, the sheer number of workers exposed to wildfire smoke means this could have a huge economic impact.

"Expose enough people to smoke for long enough, and pretty soon you're talking real money," Gongloff wrote. And that's not even accounting for health care costs and other spending that can be linked to smoke exposure.

Notably, the industries studied only account for $2.8 trillion of the $11.7 trillion in total U.S. wages. This suggests that the nationwide wage losses associated with wildfire smoke exposure may be much higher.

Why is wage loss due to wildfire smoke important?

Wage loss tied to wildfire smoke exposure is a tangible example of how rising global temperatures can directly impact the economy and people's livelihoods. The fact that workers are losing hundreds of millions of dollars in wages each year is just one indicator of how widespread smoke exposure is. Now, correlate that widespread exposure risk to the smoke's health and safety impacts …

As Gongloff notes, Stanford University has suggested that wildfire smoke is 10 times as toxic as other air pollution. Wildfire smoke damages the lungs and countless other organs, contributing to heart disease, cancer, low birth weights, and other serious health problems — including premature death. These illnesses drive up emergency room visits, placing heavy costs on individuals, medical systems, and the economy more broadly, which is also impacted by the costs of structural and environmental damage caused by wildfires. Gongloff noted that the average acreage burned each year has doubled over the past 20 years.

And the problem is only expected to grow. As rising global temperatures remain largely unaddressed, the conditions that fuel wildfires continue to worsen. 

Wildfire season is now two months longer than it was 50 years ago, per Climate Central. In the last five years alone, exposure to wildfire smoke in the continental U.S. has doubled. And the National Bureau of Economic Research has warned that "climate-induced smoke deaths" could impose $244 billion in annual economic damage by 2050.

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While an individual worker's wage loss may seem small, the cumulative effect across millions of workers is staggering. Together with mounting medical, property insurance, and recovery costs, these losses show how climate instability is straining and draining the economy — and Gongloff's piece looks at just the U.S., whereas wage and other losses could be totaled globally.

How investing in mitigation could help solve the problem

Rising global temperatures create ideal conditions for wildfires to ignite, spread, and devastate communities around the world. Investing in climate action, then, is necessary for addressing the conditions that make wildfire smoke so prevalent. 

Highlighting wage losses due to wildfire smoke can play a crucial role in inspiring action by framing climate concerns as an economic issue in addition to a major environmental problem and a pressing public health matter. This perspective could help drive stronger sustainability investments from policymakers and big business, as the issue impacts their bottom lines. Unfortunately, economics often proves more persuasive than social responsibility.

Gongloff noted that stronger forest management and more effective wildfire response can reduce the severity of toxic wildfire smoke, lessening its impact on people and the economy. He also stresses that cutting back on dirty fuels is critical to addressing the issue, as heat-trapping pollution drives the warming conditions that make wildfires more frequent and intense.

Addressing climate instability requires investment of effort, resources, and — yes — money. And while that can be expensive, the cost of inaction — both from an economic and human health perspective — is far greater.

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