ASU study offers insights into protecting heat-vulnerable jobs in Arizona

Almost 6% of Arizona workers are being drained by the heat, even as they strive to shield others from the sun.

Supercharged by climate change, extreme heat waves are straining public health and testing the endurance of the workforce, according to a new study by two Arizona State University researchers.

The study takes a deep dive into more than 16,000 tasks across 663 occupations, revealing patterns that could redefine workforce development, safety protocols and climate-ready infrastructure. 

While rooted in Arizona, the study’s insights stretch far beyond state lines, offering a blueprint for any region confronting the intensifying threat of extreme heat.

The authors — Patricia Solis, a research professor in ASU’s School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning and executive director of the Knowledge Exchange for Resilience, and Jieshu Wang, currently an assistant professor in Stony Brook University’s Department of Technology and Society and a postdoctoral research scholar at ASU’s Decision Theater — dedicated nearly a year to conceptualizing, analyzing and publishing the study. 

Their goal: to shape smarter policies that strengthen heat resilience through better workforce planning and forward-thinking infrastructure investments.

The pair recently spoke to ASU about their findings, their methodologies and why Arizona’s workforce needs protection from the heat.

Note: Answers have been edited for length and/or clarity.

Question: What inspired you to conduct this study?

Patricia Solis: Remember how the summer of 2023 was the hottest on record so far? That was the year that there was a declaration of emergency because of the extreme heat in August by the governor of Arizona, Gov. (Katie) Hobbs. Then in September, we at the Knowledge Exchange for Resilience at ASU were asked by Director Maren Mahoney of the Governor’s Office of Resiliency to help respond to the governor’s executive order that was part of that disaster declaration — the first in Arizona’s history — to put together the state’s first heat preparedness plan for the following year. 

Among the populations prioritized for heat preparedness, we knew that Arizona’s workforce needed to be included. So it was clear from previous studies that we could update data and describe who was currently among the most vulnerable workers. But it is also clear that Arizonans are resilient. Given our experience with widespread challenges like this heat emergency, it is our critical workforce who help residents be prepared and respond. But we needed to devise a new study to really get at that key question: Who makes up the workforce in Arizona who we can tap into to help us grow our resilience as we plan to be more prepared for extreme heat in the future?

Q: What percentage of Arizona’s workforce have heat-related jobs, and who are they?

Jieshu Wang: Great question. In fact, not only did we have to devise a brand new study, but we also had to develop new concepts and new innovative methods to answer this question about the latent capacity of our workforce to build resilience. We defined two kinds of heat-related jobs in this study: heat-vulnerable jobs (15% of Arizona’s workforce) and heat-solution jobs (14.4%). About 6% of Arizona’s workforce fall under both categories.

Heat-vulnerable jobs are those where workers are frequently exposed to heat during the summer, be it outdoors, indoors without A/C or in open vehicles. We found that 135 of Arizona’s occupations fall into this category, making up 15% of the state’s workforce. These jobs are concentrated in areas such as construction, farming, transportation, and building and grounds services. These people spend almost every summer day outdoors or without cooling, and without proper protections; they face serious risks of heat stress and other health problems. This first type is what people normally think of when we talk about a heat-related workforce.

The second type is what we call heat-solution jobs. These are workers whose tasks already contribute or can quickly contribute during a crisis, making communities more resilient to extreme heat. This was very important for our recommendations for preparedness. 

We identified 110 of these occupations in Arizona, representing more than 14% of Arizona’s workforce. They span a wide range of roles. Some, such as environmental scientists and geographers, conduct research on heat patterns and impacts and help develop solutions. Others, such as emergency medical technicians and community health workers, are on the front lines responding to heat-related illnesses. Technical workers including roofers, insulation workers, solar installers and electricians design and maintain the systems that keep people cool. There are also leadership and planning roles, including emergency managers, urban planners and logisticians, who organize resources and responses during heat events. And some play critical roles behind the scenes, such as 911 operators who answer emergency calls. In Phoenix, there were nearly 1,500 heat-related emergency calls in July 2023, showing just how essential their work is during heat waves.

Q: What were some surprising results or findings of your study?

Wang: To me, one of the most surprising results was that legislators showed up as a top heat-resilience occupation. At first it sounds odd, since lawmakers are not the ones outside pouring concrete or fixing power lines, but when we looked closer, it made sense. More than half of their tasks — like drafting policies, laws and budgets — directly shape how communities adapt to extreme heat.

Solis: What probably surprised us both the most was the overlap between the two groups. We found 31 “dual-impact” occupations that are both highly exposed to heat and, at the same time, essential for heat resilience. Together they account for about 6% of Arizona’s workforce. These include construction laborers, landscapers, electricians, plumbers, heating and cooling technicians, firefighters, roofers and maintenance workers. They are the ones out in the sun, most at risk from rising temperatures, but also the ones whose work keeps everyone else safe and cool. That contradiction was eye-opening: The very workers suffering the most from rising temperatures are also some of our strongest lines of defense. We need to invest broadly in these occupations as a society to protect them and build our own long-term resilience to extreme heat.

Q: What are some policies you’re recommending to improve heat resilience for the Arizona workforce?

Solis: We saw the plan as a resilience blueprint for the future, so we recommended some actions that could not only enhance current capabilities but also prepare the state for climate impacts in a context of economic growth and workforce dynamics. We supported the immediate expansion of front-line responders, knowing, for example, about essential workforce shortages of HVAC workers and ER health care workers during heat waves. But also, we recommended to grow critical weatherization workforce capacity, due to how the limited availability of specialized retrofit construction workers presents a bottleneck to cool-housing weatherization programming.

Our recommendations ... helped to further inform how to expand heat safety in the workplace, to address heat vulnerability of agricultural workers, to elevate attention to heat issues in transportation planning, to incentivize heat-smart housing development, to promote green infrastructure, to incentivize private-sector investments for heat resilience and to incentivize climate-resilient economic development. 

We also recommended that the state of Arizona commission a Future Heat Workforce Study to better understand strategic opportunities to simultaneously reduce risks, build a latent skill capacity for extreme heat response and leverage job growth within future workforce opportunity scenarios.