Working time lost to rising workplace heat stress could reach the equivalent of 145,000 full-time jobs in Sri Lanka by 2040, with annual GDP losses of around USD 26 billion, according to new International Labour Organization studies.
The projection holds even under a low-emissions pathway, the Daily Mirror reported at 10.21 a.m. Colombo time on Friday. That is the significant qualifier: the figures are not a worst case. They are what the ILO projects on the assumption that emissions are curbed.
The figures
The two studies cover Sri Lanka and the Maldives together. By 2040, reduced working time from heat stress is projected to amount to the equivalent of around 147,000 full-time jobs across both countries — approximately 145,000 in Sri Lanka and 2,400 in the Maldives.
Combined annual GDP losses are projected at around USD 26.6 billion by 2040, of which approximately USD 26 billion falls on Sri Lanka and USD 576 million on the Maldives. Both sets of figures are measured against a historical reference period, which the ILO gives as 1985–2014.
Sri Lanka therefore carries roughly 98 per cent of both the job-equivalent losses and the GDP losses in the two-country total — a function of the far larger size of its workforce and economy. The USD 26 billion figure is Sri Lanka’s own share, not the combined total.
This is not only a forecast
The studies also record losses that have already occurred. In 2023, rising workplace heat stress due to climate change already resulted in additional losses of working time and GDP in both countries, measured against the same 1985–2014 reference period.
That reframes the projection. The 2040 figures are the extension of a trend the ILO says is already measurable, not the onset of a new risk.
Which sectors carry it
In Sri Lanka, the sectors likely to be hardest hit are agriculture, followed by services, manufacturing and construction. In the Maldives, the impact falls hardest on services and construction.
Agriculture leading the list is consistent with the mechanism involved: heat stress reduces working time principally in outdoor and physically demanding work, where neither the hours nor the exertion can easily be shifted. The ranking also means the losses fall disproportionately on the part of the workforce with the least capacity to absorb them.
Context
This is a separate piece of work from the ILO’s engagement on platform and gig work in Colombo, which this desk reported on 20 October. That concerned labour-policy priorities; this is climate and economic modelling.
Sri Lanka has had repeated heat advisories through 2026, and this desk has covered the health-sector dimension of warm-weather episodes. What the ILO studies add is a quantified economic cost attached to the same phenomenon.
Not reported
The filing does not name the two studies, give their publication date, or link to them, so the methodology behind the projections cannot be checked from this reporting. It does not state what “low-emissions pathway” corresponds to in the standard emissions scenarios, or what the figures would be under a higher-emissions pathway.
It does not quantify the 2023 losses it reports as having already occurred — neither in working time nor in GDP — so the starting point of the trend is not available. It gives no breakdown of the 145,000 job-equivalent figure by sector, and does not say whether the USD 26 billion is expressed in current or constant dollars, which materially affects how the 2040 figure should be read.
No ILO official is quoted, and the filing reports no government response.
Single source. This is an ILO regional study release with a Sri Lanka country breakdown. A search of other verified newsrooms found no independent report at the time of writing; EconomyNext had not filed, and NewsFirst’s and Hiru News’s rails carried none. Ada Derana could not be checked, having returned an HTTP 403 block to this desk for some 49 consecutive days.
