Senior Thesis: Tracking the Economic Impact of Wildfires

As climate change fuels the growing intensity and frequency of natural disasters, understanding their broader societal effects becomes urgent. For Johnny Wilkens ’25, an economics major from Los Gatos, California, wildfires aren’t just an abstract policy issue—they’re personal. His hometown, nestled in the forested South Bay region, is increasingly at risk. “I’ve kind of come to expect that my childhood home might burn down in the next 40 years,” he said. 

This reality shaped the motivation for his senior thesis, which investigates the economic aftermath of wildfires—specifically, how they affect county-level employment across the Western United States. While previous studies have examined the impact of wildfire smoke on wages and productivity, Wilkens noticed a gap in research on broader economic indicators like total employment and sector-specific losses. “There’s been a lot of really fascinating work done, but this space—particularly the link between fire severity and job losses—felt underexplored,” he said. 

Wilkens merged two major datasets: monthly employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and wildfire perimeter and severity data from the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity program. His dataset spanned more than two decades, covering every western U.S. county from 2000 to 2022. “I ended up with something like 100,000 observations,” he said. “It’s big.” 

Wilkens found that the most severe wildfires led to a two-percent decrease in employment growth in affected counties. While the dip typically rebounded within five months, the disruption was significant—especially for certain sectors. 

“The sharpest impacts were in the leisure and hospitality industries,” Wilkens noted. “That makes sense: Tourism declines, businesses close, and people lose jobs.” Other sectors, like trade, transportation, or even federal government employment, showed little to no change. In some cases, interpreting the data was complicated by the way industries are grouped. “Natural resources and mining, for instance, includes both agriculture and timber—two sectors that might move in opposite directions after a fire.” 

The idea for the project began in a sophomore-year course on wildfires taught by Distinguished Associate Professor of the Bailey College of the Environment and Earth and Environmental Sciences Helen Poulos. “She’s fantastic,” Wilkens said. “That class gave me a lot of background on fire behavior and introduced me to the burn severity dataset I ended up using.”

Although the research is quantitative, Wilkens is driven by a deep concern for the human and environmental toll of wildfires. “This is about more than numbers,” he said. “It’s about livelihoods, about what it means when your town loses jobs, even temporarily, and how we can build better support systems.” 

His findings suggest that federal aid and emergency response programs are making a difference, but also point to opportunities for improvement. “If we know that certain industries are hit hardest, we can tailor policy interventions more effectively,” he said. “That might mean targeted support for tourism-dependent economies or workforce retraining programs in the aftermath of disaster.” In that vein, after graduation, Wilkens hopes to work in climate and sustainability consulting. “I want to be part of building systems—economic and otherwise—that are more respectful of the Earth,” he said. 

Outside his academic life, Wilkens is an avid jazz saxophonist, performing in both the Jazz Ensemble and Jazz Orchestra at Wesleyan. He also plays in a student band and is a member of Prometheus, Wesleyan’s fire arts performance group. “It was definitely nerve-wracking at first,” he said, recalling the group’s initial fire safety trainings. “But over time, you learn to respect the flame—and to have fun with it.” 

Reflecting on the future, Wilkens sees wildfires as a defining force in both his policy and personal life. “They’ve been with us for a long time, but they’re getting worse,” he said. “We need to understand not just how to fight them, but how to live with their consequences.”