Climate-Exposed Work and Labor Market Segmentation

There is growing evidence that climate change could exacerbate existing inequality between different groups of workers. Little is known about how occupational mobility might mitigate this concern. High mobility rates between high exposure and low exposure occupations would reduce inequality growth between the two, though increased labor supply to certain low exposure occupations could depress their wages. Challenges associated with switching occupations may cause this adaptation strategy to be highly costly to many workers. Using 9.2 million observations of individual-level panel data from France, I find low inter-exposure mobility rates, suggesting substantial labor market segmentation between high and low exposure occupations. Despite high exposure jobs comprising only 9 percent of the labor market, a worker leaving a high exposure occupation moves to a different high exposure occupation 49 percent of the time. The task composition of high exposure jobs provides a partial, but incomplete, explanation for this labor market segmentation.<br>