Stone Inequality & Social Policy Seminar: Nathan Wilmers

The Decline of Low-wage Work

Nathan Wilmers, Erwin H. Schell Associate Professor of Management and Work and Organization Studies, MIT Sloan School of Management

Abstract: From 2014 to 2024, the share of US hourly workers paid below $15 in real terms fell by two-thirds, from 38% to 13%.  This reversed around 40% of the rise in US labor market inequality since 1980, as pay increases in low-wage retail, food service and logistics jobs outpaced higher-status occupations.  Why did pay rise at the bottom of the labor market?  Using restricted-use microdata from the Occupational Employment and Wages Statistics and the Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics, we investigate the role played by work intensification, new technology adoption and ecommerce in driving up productivity and pay in low-wage workplaces.  As labor markets tightened and minimum wages increased, employers of low-wage workers rationalized jobs. 

Nathan Wilmers is the Erwin H. Schell Associate Professor of Management and Work and Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Wilmers researches wage and earnings inequality, economic sociology, and the sociology of labor.  Currently, he is working on a series of projects to understand labor market changes over the last decade.  More broadly, he is interested in bringing insights from economic and organizational sociology to understanding economic inequality.  Wilmers is the recipient of LERA's John Dunlop and the ASA Inequality, Poverty and Mobility section's William Julius Wilson early career awards, and has won the Granovetter best paper award, the ASQ best dissertation article award, the IPUMS CPS Award for Best Published Research, and the RC28 significant scholarship award.  He is a graduate of the Harvard Inequality program.