Fact-checked by Grok 2 weeks ago

David Autor

David H. Autor is an and the () and Rubinfeld Professor of at the (). He specializes in labor economics, with research centered on the causal impacts of technological automation, , and institutional factors on job structures, skill requirements, wage distributions, and . Autor earned a B.A. in from and a Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in 1999. As co-director of the (NBER) Labor Studies Program, Autor has produced foundational empirical work documenting the of the U.S. labor market, where computerization and routine-task have eroded middle-skill employment while expanding high- and low-wage occupations. His collaborative studies on the ""—the surge in Chinese imports following its 2001 World Trade Organization accession—reveal substantial, persistent declines in manufacturing jobs and adverse effects on local economies, challenging assumptions of rapid worker reallocation. These analyses highlight supply-side drivers of labor market shifts often underemphasized in policy debates. Autor's contributions have earned recognition including the in 2003, the Sherwin Rosen Prize for labor economics, the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, and the 2020 Heinz Award for contributions to economic understanding. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society, his research informs discussions on worker adaptation to technological and trade disruptions, advocating evidence-based approaches over narrative-driven interpretations.

Biography

Early Life and Education

David Autor was born in 1964 and grew up in , , where his parents worked as clinical . During high school, he developed an interest in , teaching himself programming on a computer. Autor initially enrolled at but left without completing a degree. He later attended , earning a B.A. in in 1989, with aspirations to pursue a career as a clinical psychologist, influenced by his family's professional background. Following undergraduate studies, Autor worked for three years as a software developer and directed computer skills education programs for economically disadvantaged children and adults in and . He then entered Harvard University's School of Government, where he obtained a Ph.D. in in 1999.

Academic Positions and Affiliations

David Autor joined the (MIT) Department of Economics as an in 1999. He advanced to Pentti J.K. Kouri Career Development in 2002 and to the associate level in that role in 2003. Autor received tenure as in 2005 and was promoted to full Professor in 2008. Autor held the Ford Professor of Economics chair at from 2016 to 2024. In 2024, he assumed the Daniel (1972) and Gail Rubinfeld Professorship in Economics, a position he continues to hold. He also serves as a Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow at . Throughout his career, Autor has undertaken several visiting appointments, including as Visiting Assistant Professor at the in , , in 2002; Ford Foundation Visiting Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Business in 2006; Visiting Associate Professor at the Department of Economics in 2007; Visiting Professor of Economics at from 2013 to 2014; and Visiting Professor of at the from 2021 to 2022. Autor's key affiliations include serving as Co-Director of the (NBER) Labor Studies Program since 2017 and as Faculty Research Associate at NBER. Since 2025, he has been Faculty Co-Director of MIT's James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work, and he holds a Faculty Research Associate position at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab. He previously co-directed MIT's School Effectiveness and Inequality Initiative.

Research Focus

Labor Market Polarization and Skill-Biased Change

David Autor advanced the understanding of skill-biased (SBTC) as a driver of rising U.S. , positing that innovations like computerization disproportionately boosted productivity and demand for college-educated workers relative to their supply growth during the and . In econometric decompositions, SBTC explained roughly 60% of the expansion in education-based earnings premiums and associated from 1980 to 2017. However, this framework, which treats technology as uniformly augmenting skilled labor while assuming static task structures, inadequately accounted for stagnant or declining among non-college males despite falling relative skill supplies, prompting Autor to refine models toward task-specific impacts. Autor, Katz, and Kearney empirically documented labor market polarization, revealing that U.S. employment growth from the onward concentrated in high-wage professional occupations and low-wage roles, with relative declines in middle-wage routine such as clerical and production work. Wage structure analysis showed accelerating upper-tail (90/50) through the followed by rising lower-tail (50/10) gaps post-1990, diverging from SBTC predictions of monotonic upper-end expansion. This U-shaped pattern in job and earnings growth persisted into the 2000s, with middle-skill occupations shrinking as a share of total employment. In response, Autor, Levy, and Murnane introduced a task-based perspective, arguing that recent —exemplified by —substitutes for routine cognitive and manual tasks (e.g., repetitive calculations or assembly) while complementing non-routine abstract (e.g., problem-solving) and manual (e.g., personal care) activities. Using Dictionary of Occupational Titles measures, they found routine task indices declining sharply from 1960 to 1998, alongside rises in non-routine demands, implying displacement of middle-skill workers rather than pure skill complementarity. This routine-biased (RBTC) mechanism better rationalizes , as hollows out routine middle tiers, reallocating labor to automation-resistant ends of the skill distribution. Autor and Dorn provided causal evidence for RBTC using 1980–2005 and ACS data across 722 U.S. commuting zones, showing that areas with high initial routine task exposure (per 1970s occupational measures) adopted more computers, lost routine employment faster, and saw non-college low-skill service jobs expand from 12.9% to 19.8% of work hours, with service wages rising 11 log points overall but polarizing further in affected zones. Their spatial equilibrium model confirmed RBTC's role in driving these shifts, estimating it accounts for 50–70% of U.S. earnings inequality growth since 1980 and nearly all non-high-school male wage declines, outperforming alternatives like in .

Globalization and the China Trade Shock

David Autor's research on the effects of globalization, particularly the surge in Chinese imports known as the "China Shock," has demonstrated significant adverse impacts on U.S. labor markets, challenging assumptions of rapid adjustment to trade liberalization. Collaborating with David Dorn and Gordon Hanson, Autor quantified how increased import competition from China, accelerating after its 2001 accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), led to persistent declines in manufacturing employment without commensurate offsets in other sectors. Their seminal 2013 paper, "The China Syndrome," analyzed data from 1990 to 2007, exploiting variation in local exposure to Chinese imports across U.S. commuting zones, where exposure was measured as the rise in import penetration per worker, instrumented by initial local industry composition and national-level import growth from China to other high-income countries. This shift-share instrumental variable approach addressed endogeneity concerns, attributing causality to exogenous supply shocks from China's export boom in labor-intensive manufactured goods like apparel, furniture, and electronics. Key empirical findings revealed that a one-percentage-point increase in import exposure reduced employment by approximately 0.55 percentage points relative to initial levels, translating to about 1 million U.S. jobs lost over the period, with no of reallocation to expanding trade-insensitive industries such as or services. Affected local labor markets experienced elevated rates averaging 1.5 percentage points higher, depressed labor force participation, and wage reductions of 0.35 log points for workers without college degrees, effects concentrated among non-college-educated prime-age males. These dislocations were geographically persistent, with exposed regions showing slower recovery and no migration-driven equalization of outcomes across areas, as workers remained tied to declining locales due to , , or skill mismatches. In subsequent work, Autor and coauthors extended the analysis to show that labor market adjustment to the was remarkably slow, with depressed wages and participation rates enduring for over a decade and elevated for 10–15 years post-shock. A update confirmed the persistence of these effects into the , with exposed commuting zones exhibiting 2–3% lower employment-to-population ratios and 5–6% lower mean household incomes relative to unexposed areas, even as national deficits stabilized after 2010. The research highlighted causal mechanisms including reduced firm entry, slower , and increased non-employment (e.g., claims and prime-age male withdrawal from the ) rather than smooth sectoral shifts predicted by standard models. These findings underscore globalization's uneven costs, borne disproportionately by trade-exposed communities, informing debates on policy's net effects beyond aggregate gains.

Automation, AI, and Future of Work

Autor developed a task-based to analyze 's effects on labor markets, positing that technologies primarily substitute for routine, codifiable tasks while complementing non-routine ones requiring flexibility, , or social interaction. This model explains the observed of U.S. since the , with employment growth concentrated in high-skill abstract (non-routine cognitive) occupations and low-skill (non-routine ) roles, alongside declines in middle-skill routine cognitive and jobs such as clerical and production work. from U.S. Census and data supports this, showing routine task shares falling from about 40% of in to under 30% by , correlating with stagnation in affected occupations. In assessing automation's broader historical trajectory, Autor argues it has not displaced most jobs because substitutions occur at the task level, generating new non-routine tasks that offset losses, though productivity gains often accrue disproportionately to capital owners rather than workers. For instance, 20th-century automated routine manual tasks in and , reducing those sectors' shares from over 50% in 1900 to under 10% by 2000, yet overall rose due to service-sector expansion. He identifies bounds on future automation: physical tasks involving dexterity or , and cognitive ones demanding or , remain resistant, limiting to perhaps 10-20% of current work hours over decades. Turning to artificial intelligence, Autor contends AI differs from prior automation by enabling augmentation of non-routine judgment and adaptability, potentially restoring middle-skill, middle-class jobs eroded by routinization. In his February 2024 NBER , he proposes AI as "copilots" for workers in roles like maintenance technicians or healthcare aides, allowing them to handle complex diagnostics or custom solutions that previously required high expertise, thus elevating without full . This optimistic contrasts with fears of mass displacement, emphasizing AI's capacity to democratize expertise—e.g., enabling novices to perform expert-level tasks under —provided deployment prioritizes human-AI over replacement. Recent collaborative work with reveals automation's heterogeneous wage impacts: in occupations gaining "inexpert" tasks (simplified versions of complex work), wages compress as technology enables lower-skilled entrants, while expert tasks in novice-heavy fields yield boosts without commensurate pay rises, underscoring the need to track task quality over mere exposure. Autor warns that 's effects will manifest slowly, over years, and advocates policies fostering skill development and integration to harness its potential for rather than exacerbating inequality.

Other Contributions to Labor Economics

Autor's research has examined the labor supply effects of programs. In a 2017 study of , he and coauthors found that awards provide strong consumption insurance to recipients but also induce significant reductions in household labor supply, including through spousal responses, with benefits crowding out earnings by approximately 25 cents per dollar received. A separate analysis of U.S. veterans' exposure to expanded compensation under the system estimated that benefit receipt reduced labor force participation by 18 percentage points among eligible enrollees, driven primarily by away from work rather than effects alone. These findings underscore how generous provisions can distort incentives, contributing to long-term exits from for marginally impaired individuals. He has also reassessed the role of the in shaping U.S. earnings inequality. In a 2016 paper spanning data from 1979 to 2012, Autor, along with Alan Manning and Christopher L. Smith, determined that federal and state s offset roughly 25-50% of the potential increase in the lower-tail 50/10 during periods of real minimum wage erosion, though this effect was smaller than in earlier decades due to declining bite on the wage distribution amid rising low-end wages from other factors. The study employed instrumental variable methods to address , revealing that minimum wage hikes compressed the bottom but had negligible impacts on employment levels in the affected segments. Additional work explores labor market institutions' influence on firm organization and contracting. Autor's 2003 analysis linked the adoption of -at-will doctrines across U.S. states to a surge in , as stricter unjust dismissal protections raised the costs of direct hiring and , prompting firms to shift non-core tasks to independent contractors and staffing agencies; states relaxing these doctrines saw growth slow by up to 30% relative to at-will states between 1979 and 1996. This research highlights how legal frictions in dismissal rights can reshape labor market boundaries and contribute to the rise of arrangements.

Policy Engagement and Public Impact

Testimonies, Op-Eds, and Policy Recommendations

David Autor has provided expert testimony to parliamentary committees on the implications of for labor markets. On November 20, 2023, he testified before the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, focusing on artificial intelligence's potential effects on and skills requirements. Autor has contributed opinion pieces to major outlets, emphasizing evidence-based analysis of labor market dynamics. In a September 4, 2021, New York Times , he argued that post-pandemic labor shortages in the United States represented an opportunity rather than a , attributing them less to expanded —which studies showed had minimal disincentive effects—and more to workers' aversion to low-quality jobs, as evidenced by similar shortages in without comparable benefit expansions. He highlighted data showing elevated job openings relative to , suggesting a need to address job quality over forcing higher labor force participation. In a July 14, 2025, New York Times guest essay co-authored with Gordon Hanson, Autor revisited the "China shock" of 1999–2007, which eliminated approximately 25% of U.S. manufacturing employment, causing persistent regional declines in earnings and employment as documented in his prior research. He warned of a potential "China shock 2.0" in advanced technologies like AI and semiconductors, where China leads in 57 of 64 frontier areas per Australian Strategic Policy Institute data from 2019–2023, urging policies beyond unilateral tariffs. Autor's policy recommendations center on mitigating displacement from trade and automation while fostering inclusive growth. For trade shocks, he advocates coordinated multilateral efforts with allies like the EU and Japan, targeted investments in strategic sectors via government-backed funds, and robust support for affected workers including expanded unemployment insurance, wage insurance, and retraining programs. In the context of automation and AI, he proposes "pro-worker" measures such as equalizing tax treatment between labor and capital to reduce incentives for machine substitution, modernizing wage insurance to cover earnings losses from technological displacement, introducing portable benefits decoupled from employers, developing sector-specific upskilling initiatives, and enhancing worker input in AI tool deployment to preserve middle-skill jobs. These draw from his co-authored MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future report, which calls for institutional reforms to rebuild middle-class employment eroded by prior technological and global shifts, emphasizing human-complementary innovations over pure labor displacement. Autor stresses repairing labor market institutions—like unions and vocational training—to deliver opportunity without relying on job elimination as a solution to inequality.

Reception, Debates, and Criticisms

Autor's research on the ""—the surge in U.S. from following its 2001 WTO accession—has received widespread acclaim for its empirical rigor and causal identification strategy, which used instrumental variables based on other high-income countries' to isolate effects from domestic demand shifts. The seminal 2013 paper by Autor, Dorn, and documented that regions more exposed to competition experienced declines of 1.0 per $1,000 increase in per worker from 1990 to 2007, with limited reallocation to other sectors. Subsequent work extended these findings, showing persistent effects through 2019, including 2.0 million fewer U.S. and sustained wage reductions of 0.88% per $1,000 , influencing discussions on policy and worker adjustment. Debates surrounding the center on its relative magnitude compared to and the adequacy of policy responses. Autor has argued that accounted for about 40% of U.S. job losses from 2000 to 2011, exceeding 's contribution during that period, challenging narratives emphasizing technological displacement alone. Critics, including free- proponents, contend that while import competition caused localized disruptions, aggregate U.S. rebounded via sector growth and that Autor's estimates may overstate persistence by underweighting worker mobility or fiscal multipliers from trade deficits. Autor and co-authors rebutted claims of reverse or omitted variables, such as routine-task , by demonstrating low between exposure and proxies across commuting zones. On labor market polarization, Autor's task-based framework—positing that computerization automates routine middle-skill tasks, boosting demand for non-routine cognitive and manual jobs—has shaped understanding of and shifts since the 1980s, with middle-skill occupations shrinking from 40% to 30% of by 2005. However, reappraisals question the narrative's universality, finding that post-2000 growth favored high- jobs without symmetric low- expansion when adjusting for occupational reclassification and measurement errors in task inputs. Autor maintains that reflects supply-side skill demands rather than pure demand shifts, but debates persist on whether it fully explains stagnant or if institutional factors like decline play larger roles. Criticisms of Autor's broader oeuvre include skepticism toward his downplaying of automation's displacement risks, with some arguing his emphasis on gradual task augmentation overlooks firm-level evidence of robot adoption correlating with employment reductions in exposed sectors. In policy contexts, detractors from libertarian perspectives accuse interpretations of his trade work of implicitly endorsing , despite Autor's explicit focus on adjustment assistance over tariffs. Additionally, Autor's association with a 2024 MIT paper on AI's labor effects—later disavowed by the institution due to data issues—drew scrutiny, though he was not the lead author. Despite these, his contributions are credited with empirically grounding debates on globalization's uneven costs, prompting calls for targeted retraining over broad trade barriers.

Recognition and Legacy

Awards and Honors

David Autor received the in 2003 for his research on labor market intermediation. That same year, he was awarded an Research Fellowship, supporting his early-career work in from 2003 to 2005. In 2008, Autor was granted the Sherwin Rosen Prize by the of Labor Economists for outstanding contributions to the field of labor . He was elected a of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012, recognizing his influence in social and behavioral sciences. In 2014, he became a of the , honoring advancements in econometric methods and economic theory. Autor held the Fellowship from 2019 to 2021, funding investigations into and labor market dynamics. In 2020, he received the Heinz Awards' 25th Anniversary Special Recognition Award for transforming understandings of technology's labor impacts and trade shocks. The NOMIS Foundation awarded him the Distinguished Scientist and Scholar distinction in 2023 for interdisciplinary research on work and automation. In 2025, Autor was named a Clarivate Citation Laureate for highly cited research shaping economic policy debates on trade and automation. That year, his co-authored book The Work of the Future: Building Better Jobs in an Age of Intelligent Machines (2023) won the inaugural MIT Press Faculty Book Award. He is also a Fellow of the Society of Labor Economists and holds the Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellowship at MIT for excellence in undergraduate teaching.

Influence on Economic Thought

David Autor's task-based framework for analyzing has fundamentally altered economic models of labor market dynamics, moving beyond skill-biased technological change (SBTC) paradigms that emphasized a uniform shift toward high-skilled workers. By distinguishing between routine and non-routine tasks, Autor demonstrated that primarily displaces middle-skill, routine occupations—such as clerical and roles—leading to job where employment growth concentrates in high-wage abstract tasks and low-wage manual service roles. This routinization hypothesis, formalized in papers like "Why Are There Still So Many Jobs?" (), better explains empirical patterns of wage stagnation for non-college workers and the hollowing out of middle-class jobs since the 1980s, supplanting SBTC's focus on premiums alone. Subsequent literature has widely adopted this approach, integrating it into analyses of and , as Autor's 2022 review traces four decades of evolving thought from races to uncertainties. In trade economics, Autor's "" research with David Dorn and Gordon Hanson quantified how surges in Chinese imports from 1990 to 2007 caused 2–2.4 million U.S. job losses, concentrated in local labor markets with limited reallocation due to frictions like commuting zones and skill mismatches. This challenged classical trade models assuming rapid, economy-wide adjustment via , revealing persistent wage declines, increased disability claims, and social disruptions like reduced marriage rates in affected areas. The work prompted a reevaluation of globalization's distributional costs, influencing debates on trade adjustment assistance and , with Autor noting it forced economists to confront "how labor markets truly respond" beyond aggregate gains. Autor's scholarship extends to broader critiques of labor market optimism, emphasizing place-based effects and policy frictions in areas like and minimum wages, where empirical evidence shows limited elasticities contrary to theoretical predictions. His over 104,000 Google Scholar citations reflect this impact, with key papers reshaping discussions on automation's job-preserving yet polarizing effects and AI's potential to amplify human tasks rather than displace them wholesale. Recognized as "the academic voice of the American worker," Autor's emphasis on causal identification and granular data has elevated realism in economic thought, prioritizing worker-level outcomes over macroeconomic aggregates.

References

  1. [1]
    David H. Autor | MIT Economics
    David Autor is the Daniel (1972) and Gail Rubinfeld Professor in the MIT Department of Economics, codirector of the NBER Labor Studies Program.
  2. [2]
    The Growth of Low-Skill Service Jobs and the Polarization of the US ...
    The Growth of Low-Skill Service Jobs and the Polarization of the US Labor Market by David H. Autor and David Dorn. Published in volume 103, issue 5, pages ...
  3. [3]
    The China Shock: Learning from Labor Market Adjustment to Large ...
    Adjustment in local labor markets is remarkably slow, with wages and labor-force participation rates remaining depressed and unemployment rates remaining ...
  4. [4]
    Q&A: David Autor on the long afterlife of the “China shock” | MIT News
    Dec 6, 2021 · Q&A: David Autor on the long afterlife of the “China shock”. MIT ... That was the attention-grabbing finding of a 2013 paper by MIT economist ...
  5. [5]
    Late Bloomer - People in Economics - Finance & Development ...
    Chris Wellisz profiles David Autor, the MIT economist who has done pathbreaking work on the effects of imports on the US labor market.Missing: biography | Show results with:biography
  6. [6]
    David Autor | IZA - Institute of Labor Economics
    David Autor is a Professor and Associate Department Head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Economics. He is also a Faculty Research ...Missing: biography | Show results with:biography
  7. [7]
    [PDF] David Autor Daniel (1972) and Gail Rubinfeld Professor, Margaret ...
    Jul 2, 2025 · dautor@mit.edu. MIT Department of Economics http://web.mit.edu/dautor/www. The Morris and Sophie Chang Bldg. Cambridge, MA 02142. EDUCATION.
  8. [8]
    [PDF] The Labor Market Impacts of Technological Change
    This review considers the evolution of economic thinking on the relationship between digital technology and inequality across four decades, encompassing four ...Missing: key | Show results with:key
  9. [9]
    [PDF] The Polarization of the US Labor Market - NBER - MIT Economics
    We characterize these patterns as the “polarization” of the U.S. labor market, with employment polarizing into high-wage and low-wage jobs at the expense of ...
  10. [10]
    [PDF] The Skill Content of Recent Technological Change: An Empirical ...
    The Skill Content of Recent Technological Change: An Empirical Exploration. David H. Autor, Frank Levy and Richard J. Murnane. NBER Working Paper No. 8337.
  11. [11]
    [PDF] The Growth of Low-Skill Service Jobs and the Polarization of the US ...
    We offer a unified analysis of the growth of low-skill service occupations between 1980 and 2005 and the concurrent polarization of US employment and wages.
  12. [12]
    Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States
    We analyze the effect of rising Chinese import competition between 1990 and 2007 on US local labor markets, exploiting cross- market variation in import ...
  13. [13]
    Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States
    May 10, 2012 · Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon H. Hanson, "The China Syndrome: Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States," NBER ...Missing: summary | Show results with:summary
  14. [14]
    [PDF] The China Shock: Learning from Labor Market Adjustment to Large ...
    The China Shock: Learning from Labor Market Adjustment to Large Changes in Trade ... Economics, 89(2): 379-392. Katz, Lawrence F., and David Autor. 1999. Changes ...
  15. [15]
    [PDF] On the Persistence of the China Shock
    In this paper, we re-examine the local labor market impacts of exposure to Chinese import com- petition in order to evaluate which market adjustment mechanisms ...
  16. [16]
    Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States
    IZA DP No. 7150: The China Syndrome: Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States. David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon H. Hanson.Missing: summary | Show results with:summary
  17. [17]
    Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of ...
    In this essay, I begin by identifying the reasons that automation has not wiped out a majority of jobs over the decades and centuries.
  18. [18]
    Applying AI to Rebuild Middle Class Jobs | NBER
    Feb 8, 2024 · My thesis is not a forecast but an argument about what is possible: AI, if used well, can assist with restoring the middle-skill, middle-class ...<|control11|><|separator|>
  19. [19]
    David Autor on AI and the future of work | VoxDev
    Jul 11, 2025 · David Autor presented a provocative and hopeful vision of how AI could reshape employment—not just by replacing tasks, but by amplifying human ...
  20. [20]
    A new look at how automation changes the value of labor - MIT Sloan
    Aug 18, 2025 · But new research from MIT's David Autor and Neil Thompson challenges the view that automation is always bad for workers. In a sweeping study of ...
  21. [21]
    Assessing the Real Impact of Automation on Jobs | Stanford HAI
    Jun 9, 2025 · MIT economist David Autor argues that focusing on exposure alone misses the nuances of how experts and nonexperts experience task shifts.
  22. [22]
    Disability Benefits, Consumption Insurance, and Household Labor ...
    Disability Benefits, Consumption Insurance, and Household Labor Supply by David Autor, Andreas Kostøl, Magne Mogstad and Bradley Setzler.
  23. [23]
    The Impact of Disability Benefits on Labor Supply
    The Impact of Disability Benefits on Labor Supply: Evidence from the VA's Disability Compensation Program by David H. Autor, Mark Duggan, Kyle Greenberg and ...Missing: insurance | Show results with:insurance
  24. [24]
    Disability Benefits, Consumption Insurance, and Household Labor ...
    Jun 1, 2017 · Disability Benefits, Consumption Insurance, and Household Labor Supply · David Autor · Andreas Ravndal Kostol · Magne Mogstad · Bradley Setzler.
  25. [25]
    The Contribution of the Minimum Wage to US Wage Inequality over ...
    The Contribution of the Minimum Wage to US Wage Inequality over Three Decades: A Reassessment by David H. Autor, Alan Manning and Christopher L. Smith.
  26. [26]
    The Contribution of the Minimum Wage to U.S. Wage Inequality over ...
    Nov 18, 2010 · We find that the minimum wage reduces inequality in the lower tail of the wage distribution (the 50/10 wage ratio), but the impacts are typically less than ...
  27. [27]
    HUMA Testimony: AI and the Future of Work
    Nov 20, 2023 · On November 20, 2023, David Autor testified at the House of Commons of Canada Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social ...Missing: congressional | Show results with:congressional
  28. [28]
    [PDF] Remarks for testimony for HUMA Standing Committee, 2023/11/20
    Nov 20, 2023 · My name is David Autor, and I am the Ford. Professor at the MIT Department of Economics and the MIT SFOW. I am honored to speak with you ...
  29. [29]
    Good News: There's a Labor Shortage. - The New York Times
    Sep 4, 2021 · Mr. Autor is a professor at the M.I.T. department of economics. He co-directed the M.I.T. Task Force on the Work of the Future.
  30. [30]
    https://www.bls.gov/charts/job-openings-and-labor-turnover/unemp-per-job-opening.htm
  31. [31]
    We Warned About the First China Shock. The Next One Will Be Worse.
    Jul 14, 2025 · So why, you might ask, are we still talking about the China Shock? ... David Autor is an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of ...
  32. [32]
    https://www.aspi.org.au/report/aspis-two-decade-critical-technology-tracker/
  33. [33]
    AI needs to be more 'pro-worker.' These 5 policies can help
    Oct 10, 2023 · Equalize tax rates on employing workers and on owning equipment/algorithms to level the playing field between people and machines. · Update ...
  34. [34]
    [PDF] Can We Have Pro-Worker AI
    Sep 19, 2023 · Acemoglu, Daron, and David Autor. 2011. “Skills, tasks, and technologies: Implications for employment and earnings.” Handbook of Labor Economics ...
  35. [35]
    [PDF] Building Better Jobs in an Age of Intelligent Machines
    By David Autor, David Mindell, and Elisabeth Reynolds. MIT Task Force on the ... through research areas such as human-centered. AI, collaborative ...
  36. [36]
    [PDF] Applying AI to Rebuild Middle Class Jobs
    My thesis is not a forecast but an argument about what is possible: AI, if used well, can assist with restoring the middle-skill, middle-class heart of the US.
  37. [37]
    Repairing Labor Market Institutions to Deliver Opportunity: A Q&A ...
    Feb 4, 2021 · Autor explains why simply eliminating low-wage jobs isn't the answer to building ladders of opportunity and how labor market institutions can be repaired.
  38. [38]
    [PDF] Comment on Jonathan Rothwell's Critique of Autor, Dorn, and ...
    Mar 3, 2017 · They find that CZs more exposed to import competition from China experience significantly larger reductions in manufacturing employment, ...
  39. [39]
    [PDF] On the Persistence of the China Shock - Scholars at Harvard
    ABSTRACT We evaluate the duration of the China trade shock and its impact on a wide range of outcomes over the period from 2000 to 2019. The.
  40. [40]
    On the persistence of the China shock - Brookings Institution
    Sep 8, 2021 · ... David Autor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, David Dorn ... China shock. However, U.S. communities producing goods ...
  41. [41]
    Will robots eliminate jobs? Five questions for David Autor
    Automation's effects have been much more gradual. Trade shocks [such as the effect of low cost labor from an emerging market] have been ...
  42. [42]
    The “China Shock” Demystified: Its Origins, Effects, and Lessons for ...
    Dec 12, 2023 · The China Shock refers to both a 12-year surge of Chinese imports into the United States and the first series of academic papers that analyzed it.
  43. [43]
    Has U.S. employment really polarized? A critical reappraisal
    We re-examine whether US workers have become increasingly concentrated in low and high-wage jobs relative to middle-wage jobs, a phenomenon known as employment ...
  44. [44]
    Don't Blame the Robots: Assessing the Job Polarization Explanation ...
    In two recent important papers, Acemoglu and Autor (2011, 2012) raise significant concerns about the ability of the “canonical model” of skill-biased technical ...Introduction · II. Theory, claims, and data · III. An introductory look at...
  45. [45]
    Is automation labor-displacing? Productivity growth, employment ...
    David Autor and Anna Salomons find that while automation hasn't taken away jobs, it has reduced the share of profits going to wages.
  46. [46]
    MIT Says It No Longer Stands Behind Student's AI Research Paper
    May 16, 2025 · The paper was championed by MIT economists Daron Acemoglu, who won the 2024 economics Nobel, and David Autor. Hugely embarrassing.
  47. [47]
    The China Shock: Reevaluating the Debate
    Oct 14, 2022 · Autor and his co-authors find that the broader trade shock on jobs stabilized after 2010, but the effects have lingered and continued to affect ...Missing: key | Show results with:key<|separator|>
  48. [48]
    Sherwin Rosen Prize - The Society of Labor Economists
    Sherwin Rosen Prize. On October 1, 2003, the SOLE membership established the ... 2008 - David Autor 2010 - Robert Shimer 2012 - Marianne Bertrand 2014 ...
  49. [49]
    13 faculty members elected to the American Academy of Arts and ...
    Apr 17, 2012 · 13 faculty members elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences ... David Autor, professor of economics;; Bonnie Berger, professor of ...
  50. [50]
    Current Fellows | The Econometric Society
    David Autor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, elected 2014. Constantine Azariadis, Washington University in St. Louis, elected 1989. Kyle Bagwell ...
  51. [51]
    David Autor receives Heinz Award | MIT News
    Oct 13, 2020 · MIT economist David Autor has been named the recipient of the Heinz 25th Special Recognition Award, as part of the 25th anniversary of the Heinz Awards.Missing: background | Show results with:background
  52. [52]
    David Autor - The NOMIS Foundation
    Born in the US, Autor earned a BA in psychology from Tufts University (Medford, US) and a PhD in public policy from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School ...Missing: biography | Show results with:biography<|separator|>
  53. [53]
    David Autor and Sendhil Mullainathan named 2025 Clarivate ...
    Sep 25, 2025 · Economics faculty members David Autor and Sendhil Mullainathan are among 22 researchers named 2025 Citation Laureates by Clarivate, ...
  54. [54]
    MIT Press announces new Faculty and Alumni Book Awards
    Apr 10, 2025 · 2025 MIT Press Faculty Book Award is “The Work of the Future: Building Better Jobs in an Age of Intelligent Machines” (2023), by David Autor ...
  55. [55]
    [PDF] The labor market impacts of technological change: from unbridled ...
    I conclude by discussing opportunities and challenges that we collectively face in shaping this future. David Autor. Department of Economics, E52-438.<|control11|><|separator|>
  56. [56]
    https://economics.mit.edu/sites/default/files/publications/why%20are%20there%20still%20jobs%202014.pdf
  57. [57]
    https://www.nber.org/papers/w30074
  58. [58]
    http://www.ddorn.net/papers/Autor-Dorn-Hanson-ChinaShock.pdf
  59. [59]
    Interview with David Autor | Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
    Sep 7, 2016 · MIT economist on tech, trade & job markets, how Chinese imports affect US politics & family structure, and the Janus-faced gig economy.Interview With David Autor · Author · Trade Liberalization And...Missing: biography | Show results with:biography<|separator|>
  60. [60]
    ‪David Autor‬ - ‪Google Scholar‬
    The growth of low-skill service jobs and the polarization of the US labor market ... National Bureau of Economic Research, 1997. 4186, 1997. Trends in US wage ...<|separator|>
  61. [61]
    David Autor, the academic voice of the American worker
    Mar 16, 2019 · From automation to China, the economist has forced a reassessment of how labour markets respond to disruption.