{
  "schema_version": "immigrationdb-research-article-v1",
  "slug": "warmer-cities-unemployment",
  "url": "https://immigrationdb.com/research/warmer-cities-unemployment/",
  "title": "Do Warmer Cities Have Higher Unemployment?",
  "headline": "Warmth and unemployment reverse direction by country",
  "question": "Inside a country, do warmer cities have higher unemployment, and does the relationship point the same way in every country?",
  "summary": "Do warmer cities have higher unemployment? Across 13,220 cities in 34 countries, the relationship reverses direction, making the pooled 0.06 misleading.",
  "published": "2026-08-06",
  "updated": "2026-08-06",
  "author": "Maksim Streltcov",
  "license": "https://immigrationdb.com/legal/terms/",
  "sections": [
    "What we measured",
    "What the data shows",
    "Where it breaks down",
    "What this means if you are moving",
    "Limits",
    "Method",
    "Sources"
  ],
  "faq": [
    {
      "q": "Do warmer cities have higher unemployment?",
      "a": "Not consistently. Across 13,220 city rows, the pooled Spearman coefficient is +0.06, but the 28 reportable country coefficients split evenly: 14 positive and 14 negative. They range from -0.74 in Latvia to +0.60 in Italy, so the relationship must be read within each country."
    },
    {
      "q": "Why is the pooled unemployment coefficient misleading?",
      "a": "The pooled +0.06 is not an average of country coefficients. It re-ranks cities after 34 national labour-market systems and different observation periods are merged, while the United States supplies 42.8% of all rows. It therefore reflects sample composition as well as within-country association."
    },
    {
      "q": "Where is the strongest positive relationship?",
      "a": "Italy has the strongest positive country coefficient: +0.60 across 812 cities. Its Pearson coefficient is +0.57, so the direction is not created by the use of ranks. This remains a descriptive association within the Italian sample and does not show that warmer weather produces unemployment."
    },
    {
      "q": "Where is the strongest negative relationship?",
      "a": "Latvia has the strongest negative coefficient at -0.74 across 27 cities, followed by Poland at -0.47 across 222. Latvia is only seven observations above the reporting floor, so its exact magnitude should be read more cautiously than Poland's larger-sample result."
    },
    {
      "q": "Does sunshine show the same labour-market pattern as temperature?",
      "a": "Only partly. Full-sample temperature and sunshine coefficients share a sign in 15 of 20 countries. When temperature is recalculated on exactly the sunshine-complete rows, agreement falls to 13 of 20. Italy remains aligned and the United Kingdom remains opposite, so sunshine is a robustness check rather than confirmation."
    }
  ],
  "countries": [
    "austria",
    "belgium",
    "canada",
    "france",
    "germany",
    "hungary",
    "italy",
    "japan",
    "latvia",
    "netherlands",
    "norway",
    "poland",
    "slovakia",
    "slovenia",
    "south-korea",
    "spain",
    "sweden",
    "switzerland",
    "united-kingdom",
    "united-states"
  ],
  "answer": "Across 13,220 city rows, warmer places do not share one unemployment pattern. Among 28 countries with at least 20 observations, Spearman is negative in 14 and positive in 14, from -0.74 in Latvia (n=27) to +0.60 in Italy (n=812). The pooled +0.06 is not an average country effect; the useful answer is country-specific."
}