When snow falls, it causes travel disruptions. January 2009 was much like January 2010 with the city coming to almost a standstill. Trains were cancelled and delayed, buses stopped travelling on their routes because it was too dangerous and people were stuck in hours of traffic. This can do one of two things to a company. It can either cause them to pay staff when they are not working, as if they arrive late permanent members of staff will get paid for the whole day, or the staff will take the day off resulting in a loss of productivity. Either way, businesses lose out on money. This is in no way good for a recession bound economy trying to recover it once high GDP (gross domestic product= the total value of all good and services produced in that country).

With 10% of employees taking a snow day, businesses who make their profit by selling lunch to workers will be struck hard. From Tesco’s to the office sandwich man, the sale of lunch items could potentially go down 10%. Stores and cafes would be hit the worse as the people who did actually make it into work would then be reluctant to leave to get lunch and instead opt for eating a homemade sandwich. Given that lunch time in the city is big business (you only need to look at the amount of Starbuck and Café Nero’s to know this) the economy is adversely affected when sales in this department fall.

Snow entails a large burden on the economy. Every winter requires the shoveling of snow, the consumption of more fuel in automobiles, the consumption of more energy to keep houses warm, and specific attire.

Granted, all of that creates jobs, but if it were to never snow, we would all have more money in our pockets, and we could allocate it to different jobs such as feeding the hungry and rebuilding dilapidated neighborhoods.