Nearly a million young people in the UK are neither earning, nor learning. @nyecominetti.bsky.social spoke on a recent episode of High Resolution about how the relationship between health and work might be more reciprocal than many think. Listen here ⤵️ buff.ly/bvnZ6OI

This pay penalty - worth over £2,800 a year - is significant, completely unjustified and needs to be tackled, says @annastansbury.bsky.social . The next stage of our research will explore why it occurs - could it be access to internships, social capital for example?

Speaking at our event @annastansbury.bsky.social says the striking new finding from our research is that two people getting the same grade for the same degree at the same university at the same time still face big earnings gap ten years later just because one of them experienced child poverty.

Today we discussed new research from @resolutionfoundation.org co-authored with @gthwaites.bsky.social @annastansbury.bsky.social and Richmond Egyei on the long shadow that deep poverty in childhood casts over the earnings of graduates in the labour market. Thread below on what we found …

Important findings! Understanding franchising in detail is crucial for understanding many parts of the low wage labor market, and this team keeps producing papers that hugely advance our knowledge

We will be launching our new research tomorrow at @resolutionfoundation.org We find that in the UK, even when comparing two people who graduate from the same uni degree, with the same grade, socioeconomic background still affects later life earnings Come in person or to the webinar 👇

Our research on regional inequality was featured on the BBC Today programme, focusing on how to boost the UK's non-London "second tier" cities. Listen from 2:39 (w/ Ed Balls & Dan Turner) www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Interesting research on California minimum wage increases. The summary says that the raises are associated with two additional workplace injuries per 1,000 workers. But the estimated welfare trade-offs still favor the raises. Solution: pair raises with OSH standards & enforcement.

A new working paper co-authored by @annastansbury.bsky.social and supported by the Upjohn Institute’s ECRA award suggests that raising the minimum wage has an unexpected side effect: higher rates of workplace injuries for low-wage workers. Read more at: www.upjohn.org/research-hig... #econsky

📢New WP: Minimum Wages and Workplace Injuries Using California state and local minimum wage increases 2000-2019, we find minimum wage hikes increase workplace injury rates for low-wage workers. A plausible mechanism is work intensification 🧵 w/ @rjisungpark.bsky.social & Michael Davies

🗓️ Next Tuesday We'll be launching new research on graduate social mobility in the UK and discussing next week with @annastansbury.bsky.social, Imran Rasul, Anvar Sarygulov, @juliadelldiniz.bsky.social, @mikebrewerecon.bsky.social Tickets here ➡️ buff.ly/7WaW1oc

How far can you get in 60 minutes? European cities offer vastly larger areas reachable by public transit than US cities of comparable population size. Source: lconwell.github.io/lucasconwell...

Socioeconomic background is notably absent from most research on elite career progression. In their blog post, Stone Center Affiliated Scholar @annastansbury.bsky.social and Kyra Rodriguez of UC Berkeley discuss their forthcoming paper, "Class Background Matters for Career Progression."

Blog post summarizing my research with Kyra Rodriguez on the class gap!

CRUCIALLY, this is a non-London problem We calculated the grad wage premium for each UK region and nation a few years ago, and you see declining graduate wage premia in every English region except London If we want to diagnose why the UK is such an outlier the answer is in the regional story

What’s next on my reading list: new* books from three of my favorite social scientists *(2025!) @mitiwer.bsky.social @maxkasy.bsky.social

Has someone studied this? It seems eminently feasible!

The other outcome that I've seen - when there are so many As students at the very top can't distinguish themselves through their classwork. Going really deep on a class and writing a truly superb paper won't change grade --> increased incentive to distinguish through extra curriculars.

One of the worst outcomes of grade inflation is that it discourages students pushing themselves. College should be about taking a class that's a bit too hard for you, or in a field you don't know much about... but the risk of a B when so many get straight As is real. Safer to stick to what you know.

I will be enthusiastically supporting faculty legislation to cap the number of A's at Harvard at 20% (plus a bit). The collective action problem that has driven grades higher & higher over time is increasingly problematic. I hope other institutions consider similar steps.

Labor Market Competition symposium in the JEP-- all articles look like a must-read.

A new WP that uses data from U.S. academic jobs shows that a person's socioeconomic background is an important determinant not just of their career starting point, but of their career progression. Read the WP on the academia class gap by @annastansbury.bsky.social & Kyra Rodriguez. bit.ly/4ab6xRs

Great new paper! A similar study in the U.K. is long overdue. A lot of elite employers in the U.K. have begun to take class background seriously, but universities remain woefully behind

Only tangentially related to your work Anna, but here's a neat paper on "following parents" and the economic returns to it, using siblings as a comparison onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Yes, class is insufficiently studied and compensated for, compared to race and gender.

"How do class gaps compare to race and gender gaps? Strikingly, we find that the class gaps in tenure-track academia are as large as or larger than analogous race or gender gaps."

📢now forthcoming in ECMA! The Class Gap in Career Progression: Evidence from US Academia Class is rarely a focus of research or DEI in elite US occupations. Evidence suggests it should be: we find a large class gap in at least one occupation - tenure-track academia...🧵

📢 🏹 Call for Papers 🏹📢 3rd workshop in Labour Economics at Nottingham GEP When: June 1-2, 2026 Keynotes: Gordon Dahl (UCSD) and @annastansbury.bsky.social (MIT) Small, in-person workshop; plenty of interactions! 🗓️ Submit by March 1 🗓️ Link: tinyurl.com/3kdpb64a #EconSky #EconConf

This should be a super workshop. Submit below

I am very much looking forward to the Nottingham Labour Economics workshop this summer! Submissions invited 👇

very cool job opp!

I think @annastansbury.bsky.social empirical work on the top-heavy socioeconomic makeup of the economics academy is bar-none the most important inward-facing conversation we have as academics; and is the most illuminating work in explaining the status quo policy preferences of economists. #EconSky

The *hidden curriculum* was a VERY frequently mentioned topic here, including: how academic publishing worked, how to negotiate contracts, get pay raises, how tenure worked, how to approach faculty, how to apply for awards, how the academic hierarchy worked...

While many, many respondents from less advantaged backgrounds talked about these factors, most academics from advantaged backgrounds did *not* identify cultural capital as a privilege. Shout out to sociologists and poli sci who were (unsurprisingly) the most frequent exception

One key theme was **cultural capital** Norms of speech, dress and behavior were very often raised. These "upper middle class" or "elite East Coast" norms were factors that made people feel excluded not just from first-gen or low-income backgrounds, but also from middle class

Really interesting (and necessary) thread!! It seems that good mentorship can significantly reduce barriers for many low-SES PhD students. We, as postdocs, can also help reduce these barriers by informally sharing our knowledge about norms and customs in academia with our younger colleagues.

In our research on socioeconomic background in academia, we ran a survey. Over 2,000 faculty members responded (thanks if you were one!) Social & cultural capital showed up time and again as key issues. A few findings you might be interested in...🧵

One thing I haven't seen in discussions about the UK minimum wage increase: the higher the bite, the greater the incentive for non-compliance In research w @resolutionfoundation.org in 2020 we found that the current system of penalties and enforcement was insufficient to ensure compliance

Tight labor markets in the last decade reduced US community college enrollment. Super interesting pic here showing just how countercyclical community college enrollment is (as compared to basically non-cyclical 4 year college enrollment) From @joshua-goodman.com & Winkelman new NBER WP

When I was in high school/undergrad I found these particularly interesting/thought provoking: The Worldly Philosophers The Affluent Society The Ascent of Money The Return of Depression Economics Development as Freedom Dead Aid The Bottom Billion

Importantly, making unfair dismissal a "Day One" right would likely have been counterproductive for workers. It would induce firms not to "take a chance" on candidates who seem risky or have unusual profiles. ...

The Government is right to keep but reduce ‘qualifying periods’ for unfair dismissal protection. Making unfair dismissal a ‘day one’ right would have taken the UK from one internation extreme to another.

"28 more effective than cash transfers in a baseline scenario and 3732 (!!!) times in an optimistic scenario" It's early in the evaluation process, but still: Malengo is such a cool program!

ICYMI given today's focus on the budget: the UK government has today also published a working paper on options for reform of non-compete agreements. Responses to the specific options set out therein (statutory limits, size cutoffs and an outright ban), can be submitted until 18 February. 1/2

Jakob and the CMA have done really superb economic research over the last years - this is a great "best of" thread

If you are in Cambridge, MA on December 10, join us at a panel on Rebuilding State Capacity with Don Moynihan, Jen Pahlka, and Elizabeth Linos www.hks.harvard.edu/events/rebui...

Very interesting looking paper. @nikdatta.bsky.social has a related paper on zero-hour contracts in the UK: www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/gel89...

This is a fascinating paper. It's the first (afaik) to actually document food&drink&retail scheduling unpredictability using actual firm data. It illustrates v clearly why unpredictable scheduling makes these jobs so difficult:

🚨 New working paper! How well do people predict the results of studies? @sdellavi.bsky.social and I leverage data from the first 100 studies to have been posted on the SSPP, containing 1,482 key questions, on which over 50,000 forecasts were placed. Some surprising results below.... 🧵👇