Traditionally, labor economics studies how employers and employees respond to changes in wages, profits, prices and working conditions. Over the past two decades, labor economists have expanded the scope of their research to include much of applied economics. The areas of research spanned by our labor economists include crime, economics of the family, education, discrimination, and other traditional labor topics. Over the last few decades, a major divide arose within labor economics with some labor economists emphasizing the value of natural (and actual) experiments, while others estimating models linked to economic theory. At the University of Michigan, we have labor economists doing both kinds of work, and we get along with each other! In fact, we pride ourselves in being diverse in terms of methods we use, and topics we study.
Faculty in the Field
Primary Appointment within the Economics Department
Primary Appointment outside the Economics Department
School of Information
Ford School of Public Policy & Department of Economics (courtesy)
Institute for Social Research
School of Education & Department of Economics (courtesy)
Ford School of Public Policy & Department of Economics (courtesy)
Recent Graduate Student Placement Locations
Fed Board
Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston
Stanford University
George Washington University
University of Arizona
Vanderbilt University
Rutgers
University of Kentucky
Dartmouth
University of Delaware
University of Memphis
American University
Middlebury
College Board (2)
American Institutes for Research
Ford Motor Company
Yale (postdoc)
SOLO World Partners
Vanguard
SEC
RAND Corp
Mathematica
Urban Institute
Microsoft
Amazon
US Census
US Treasury
Seminars, Reading Groups, Lunches, etc.
Labor Lunch, Student Seminar (Thursdays)
Labor Seminar (Wednesday afternoons)
