Susan N. Houseman (born 1956) is an American economist who is the vice president and director of research at the

W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research The W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research is an American research organization based in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Its purpose is to find and promote solutions to employment-related problems. Background The W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employm ...

. She is also a member of the

National Bureau of Economic Research The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic c ...

Conference on Research on Income and Wealth, chairs the Technical Advisory Committee of the U.S.

Bureau of Labor Statistics The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is a unit of the United States Department of Labor. It is the principal fact-finding agency for the U.S. government in the broad field of labor economics and statistics and serves as a principal agency of t ...

, and co-directs the Labor Statistics Program at the

IZA Institute of Labor Economics The IZA - Institute of Labor Economics (german: Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit), until 2016 referred to as the Institute of the Study of Labor (IZA), is a private, independent economic research institute and academic network focused o ...

Education

Houseman holds a bachelor of arts degree in economics and international relations from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. in economics from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

(1985).

Career

Houseman began her career as a professor at the

University of Maryland School of Public Policy The Maryland School of Public Policy is one of 14 schools at the University of Maryland, College Park. The school is located inside the Capital Beltway and ranks 16th nationally for schools of public policy according to '' U.S. News & World Repor ...

and a visiting scholar at the

Brookings Institution The Brookings Institution, often stylized as simply Brookings, is an American research group founded in 1916. Located on Think Tank Row in Washington, D.C., the organization conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in ec ...

. She left these institutions in 1989 to join the

Kalamazoo Kalamazoo ( ) is a city in the southwest region of the U.S. state of Michigan. It is the county seat of Kalamazoo County. At the 2010 census, Kalamazoo had a population of 74,262. Kalamazoo is the major city of the Kalamazoo-Portage Metropolit ...

, in large part because this position allowed her more time to raise her four children. Her research focuses on temporary help employment, outsourcing, and the way that these working arrangements affect workers' compensation and official measures of productivity. Her research has shown that extraordinary growth in the computer industry—not automation in other industries—is responsible for all of the unusual productivity growth in the manufacturing sector, and that declining manufacturing employment in the US is due more to

trade Trade involves the transfer of goods and services from one person or entity to another, often in exchange for money. Economists refer to a system or network that allows trade as a market. An early form of trade, barter, saw the direct excha ...

than to

automation Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, namely by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines ...

. During the

Covid-19 recession The COVID-19 recession, also referred to as the Great Lockdown, is a global recession, global economic recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The recession began in most countries in February 2020. After a year of global economic slowdown ...

, Houseman was a frequent commentator on

layoff A layoff or downsizing is the temporary suspension or permanent termination of employment of an employee or, more commonly, a group of employees (collective layoff) for business reasons, such as personnel management or downsizing (reducing the ...

s and unemployment insurance programs. She also advocated the use of voluntary workshare programs to maintain relationships between workers and employers. Her research on the success of these programs in European countries was cited by the Biden presidential campaign in their plans to expand the use of such programs in the United States.

Selected works

* Houseman, Susan N. "Why employers use flexible staffing arrangements: Evidence from an establishment survey." ''Ilr Review'' 55, no. 1 (2001): 149-170. * David, H., and Susan N. Houseman. "Do temporary-help jobs improve labor market outcomes for low-skilled workers? Evidence from" Work First"." ''American economic journal: applied economics'' 2, no. 3 (2010): 96-128. * Houseman, Susan, Christopher Kurz, Paul Lengermann, and Benjamin Mandel. "Offshoring bias in US manufacturing." ''Journal of Economic Perspectives'' 25, no. 2 (2011): 111-32. * Houseman, Susan. "Outsourcing, offshoring and productivity measurement in United States manufacturing." ''International Labour Review'' 146, no. 1‐2 (2007): 61-80. * Abraham, Katharine G., and Susan N. Houseman. ''Does employment protection inhibit labor market flexibility? Lessons from Germany, France, and Belgium''. No. w4390. National Bureau of Economic Research, 1993.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Houseman, Susan American women economists 20th-century American economists 21st-century American economists University of Maryland, College Park faculty Harvard University alumni Labor economists University of Virginia alumni Living people 1956 births 20th-century American women 21st-century American women