Institute for Research on Labor and Employment

We investigate gender disparities in the effect of COVID-19 on the labor market outcomes of skilled Ugandan workers. Leveraging a high-frequency panel dataset, we find that the lockdowns imposed in Uganda reduced employment by 69% for women and by 45% for men, generating a previously nonexistent gender gap of 20 p.p. Eighteen months after the onset of the pandemic, the gap persisted: while men quickly recovered their pre-pandemic career trajectories, 10% of the previously employed women definitively separated from the labor market, and another 35% remained occasionally employed. Additionally, the lockdowns permanently shifted female workers to sectors misaligned with their skill sets, relocated them into agriculture and other unskilled sectors, and widened the gender pay gap. Pre-pandemic sorting of women into economic sectors subject to the strongest restrictions and childcare responsibilities induced by schools’ prolonged closure only explain up to 57% of the employment gap.

This paper explores trends in inter-firm transactions (IFT) in the U.S. in relation to the varied approaches that researchers have used to study domestic outsourcing. I develop a typology of IFT that references distinct definitions of outsourcing, and I generate a new methodology for measuring domestic IFT using the Bureau of Economic Analysis National Input-Output Accounts data. I analyze IFT trends for individual industries and for three groups: all goods and services, all services, and only services that could feasibly be produced in-house by the purchaser. Trends in IFT vary considerably across industries, but IFT for services and for feasibly in-house services have increased in recent decades, both as a portion of total economic output and as a portion of services output. This study offers the first comprehensive assessment of changes in domestic IFT in the U.S., and establishes a conceptual and empirical foundation for further research on domestic outsourcing.

This paper examines drivers of domestic outsourcing through a case study of food services. It demonstrates that outsourcing is not necessarily motivated by clients’ desire to reduce costs or improve efficiency, and suggests that in some cases outsourcing may cost more than inhouse production. Instead, this study points to other kinds of financial incentives to outsource food services. For tech companies, an important incentive is to limit employee headcount in order to improve productivity metrics and thereby increase a company’s appeal to financial stakeholders. For universities, an important incentive is to obtain financing for facilities improvements from contractor companies.

This paper explores the correlation between inter-firm transactions (IFT) and workers’ wages across industries in the U.S., in order to further our understanding of outsourcing-related wage penalties. Using a new typology and methodology for measuring IFT, I find that the aggregate correlation between IFT and wages is positive across all industries, but that a dummy variable identifying services that could feasibly be produced in-house by the purchaser has a negative pull on the correlation. Further analysis of IFT and wages for specific occupations and industries reveals a complex and heterogeneous relationship, and points to the importance of exploring additional qualitative aspects of transactions between firms, as well as other factors that have affected workers’ wages. This analysis helps us refine our understanding of which type of IFT are relevant for understanding wage penalties related to domestic outsourcing.

We analyze effects of the minimum wage on the labor supply of parents of young children. Distributional difference-in-differences and event study models document a sharp rise in employment rates of single mothers with children ages 0 to 5 following minimum wage increases. Effects are concentrated among jobs paying close to the minimum wage. We find corresponding drops in the probability of staying out of the labor force to care for family members. Results are consistent with simple labor supply models in which childcare costs create barriers to employment. Minimum wage increases then enable greater labor force participation and reduce child poverty.

We study how referral hiring contributes to racial inequality in firm-level labor demand over the firm’s life cycle using data from Brazil. We consider a search model where referral networks are segregated, firms are more informed about the match quality of referred candidates, and some referrals are made by non-referred employees. Consistent with the model, we find that firms are more likely to hire candidates and less likely to dismiss employees of the same race as the founder, but these differences diminish as firms’ cumulative hires increase. Referral hiring helps to explain racial differences in dismissals, seniority, and employer size.

The United States enterprise-based collective bargaining regime creates substantial limitations for organizing workers where supply chains are increasingly disaggregated in ways that reduce worker power. Federal labor law generally preempts state and local policies that directly address private sector bargaining. State and local governments, however, are not preempted from setting general labor standards. We look at four cases of recent experiments at the local level with sectoral standards. Our cases show that sectoral standards have the potential to expand new forms of social bargaining at the state and local level through public policy in areas of the country where worker organizations are already strong. They can do so in ways that promote worker organization and build institutional power, especially when combined with robust worker organizing. In doing so they show both the potential power, and limitations, of federalism in US workplace.

One central theory undergirding the Equity by Design (ExD) Community of Practice (CoP) is that building the capacity of district teams, composed primarily of leaders of color, to transform organizations has the potential to create conditions for more equitable outcomes for historically marginalized students. Caroline Hill, the CoP facilitator, used the Equity Action Framework Tool (EAFT), empathy interviews, and equity walks during in-person convenings, webinars, and local collaborations to deepen participants’ learning. The CoP was comprised of district leaders of color (n = 27) from five school districts in the Midwest and East Coast, all of whom served predominantly students of color who also qualified for free or reduced lunch.

We use the EAFT, a research-based tool of individual and collective leadership dispositions and competencies, to test ExD’s theory of action. Specifically, we explored three research questions:

Research Question 1: How do school district leaders of color participating in the ExD CoP learn to design and implement equitable policies and practices aimed at closing persistent opportunity gaps?

Research Question 2: To what degree do school district leaders of color change policies and practices aimed at closing persistent opportunity gaps after participating in a CoP?

Research Question 3: To what degree do school district leaders of color describe changes in their policies and practices aimed at closing persistent opportunity gaps after participating in a CoP?

First, we found that CoP members learned to design and implement equitable policies and practices aimed at closing opportunity gaps through the use of (a) skillful facilitation, (b) learning about the past to design for the future, and (c) core characteristics of the CoP.

Second, after analyzing pre-, mid- and post-survey responses, we found that participants reported that their greatest learning was in the areas of (a) being able to assess the will, skill, knowledge, and capacity of the organization to disrupt inequitable policies and practices; and (b) developing a theory of change to disrupt inequitable policies and practices based on an analysis of data.

Third, we found that school closure and reopening plans due to the COVID-19 pandemic created a unique opportunity to understand how school systems were applying their learning from the CoP to design policies and practices aimed at closing persistent opportunity gaps.

We provide four important recommendations for the ExD portfolio as it continues to deepen and sustain its impact aimed at supporting school district leaders of color to design equitable policies and practices: (a) continued support for the ExD CoP beyond the initial 1-year period; (b) focus on practice in particular in the next iteration of the CoP; (c) include a 3 geographic representation of schools in future CoPs that account for both charter and traditional public schools; and (d) continue to use the EAFT in future CoPs to deepen and sustain ExD team members’ capacity to design equitable policies and practices.

We examine how the racial patchwork of federal and state minimum wage changes between 1990 and 2019 has affected racial wage gaps, with specific attention to effects on labor market frictions. Black workers on average are less likely to live in high-wage states that have raised their wage floors. The effect of state minimum wages on the national racial wage gap is thus not self-evident.

Using five different causal specifications, including the “bunching” estimator of Cengiz et al. (2019), and data from the CPS and the QWI, we find that minimum wage changes since 1990 did reduce the 2019 racial wage gaps, by 12 percent among all workers and 60 percent among less-educated workers. The reductions are greater among black women and among black prime age workers. The gains for black workers are concentrated well above the new minimum wage, beyond the usual spillover estimates. Earnings of all race/ethnic/gender groups grew, with larger effects among black workers. We do not find disemployment effects for any group.

Surprisingly, racial differences in initial wages do not explain the reduction in the racial wage gap. Rather, minimum wages expand job opportunities for black workers more than for white workers. We present a model in which minimum wages assist the job search of workers who do not own automobiles and who live farther from jobs. Our causal results using the ACS show that minimum wages increase commuting via automobile among black workers, supporting our model. Minimum wages also reduce racial gaps in separations and hires, further suggesting the policies especially enhance job opportunities for black workers.

This article examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on immigrant employment in the United States using data from the Current Population Survey. It also provides the first evidence about the impact of the new public charge rules on the employment behavior of immigrants during the post-outbreak recovery. The authors find that among immigrants with household earnings at levels that make them susceptible to inadmissibility under the new rules, noncitizen status is associated with a 3.7% increase in employment among immigrant men. This effect is robust to inclusion of controls for socioeconomic characteristics and various fixed effects, and it is concentrated for men in states with below average unemployment benefit take-up. Findings also show that the differential employment effect is stronger in state-months with higher COVID-19 rates, suggesting that impacted workers may be increasing their workplace exposure to COVID-19.