published in: Contemporary Economic Policy, 2021, 39 (4), 867-881
Winter weather affects hours worked. We examine how work hours reported in the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS) vary with respect to snowfall in 265 metropolitan areas over the years 2004-2014. The effects of snowfall on work hours vary across types of workers, occupation, industry, and region. Losses in work hours due to snow events are particularly large in the South and among construction workers. An average daily inch of snowfall during a reference week reduces work by about an hour. Few of the hours lost from large snowfalls are "made-up" in subsequent weeks. A "back-of-an-envelope" calculation suggests that in an average year, snow leads to a 0.15 percent loss in annual hours worked, a small but nontrivial impact.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.