John is a senior research fellow at CEPR, where he was a senior economist between 2005 and 2015. He later worked as the Research Director at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth and the Vice President of the Economic Policy Institute.
He has published peer-reviewed research on a range of labor market issues including unemployment, wage inequality, the minimum wage, unionization, immigration, technology, racial inequality, mass incarceration, and other topics. His research has been cited widely in the media including The Economist, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
His popular writing has appeared in The American Prospect, Boston Review, BusinessWeek.com, Challenge, Democracy, Dissent, The Guardian, The International Herald Tribune, Salon, The Washington Post, and other publications. Schmitt co-authored three editions of The State of Working America and co-edited Low-Wage Work in the Wealthy World (Russell Sage Foundation, 2010).
From 1999 through 2015, he was a regular visiting professor in public policy at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. In the 1990s, he was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Central America in San Salvador, El Salvador, and later worked as an information officer for the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL).
He has a Ph.D. and an M.Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economics and an A.B. in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University.
All from John Schmitt
Parental Leave 20 Years After FMLA
It has been 20 years since the passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), a landmark piece of legislation that guaranteed covered workers the right to take up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave in the event of a birth or adoption or to deal with
Eye of the Beholder
Over the last few months, I have repeatedly heard opponents of raising the federal minimum wage argue that “85 percent” of the “most credible studies” find that increasing the minimum wage has a negative effect on employment.
Job Protection Isn’t Enough: Why America Needs Paid Parental Leave
December 2013, Heather Boushey, Jane Farrell, and John Schmitt
Women Workers and Unions
December 2013, John Schmitt and Nicole Woo
Every Day Low Wages
Workers at retail establishments across the country are gearing up for Black Friday sales. Workers at Walmart are also preparing for a series of actions across the country to protest low-wages at the retail giant.
Skills and Growth
The OECD recently released an enormously useful 466-page report(pdf) on labor-market skills in its member countries. The document is the first of what will be an annual series of OECD Skills Outlook reports, in the style of the organization’s regular Empl
Don’t Blame the Robots
Earlier this week, the Economic Policy Institute and CEPR released a paper (pdf) by Larry Mishel, Heidi Shierholz (both of EPI) and me, which argues that the evidence in favor of the view that technology is causing economic inequality is weak. The paper c
Don’t Blame the Robots: Assessing the Job Polarization Explanation of Growing Wage Inequality
November 2013, Lawrence Mishel, Heidi Shierholz, and John Schmitt
Meer and West on Minimum Wage
According to a new working paper by Texas A&M economists Jonathan Meer and Jeremy West, raising the minimum wage may have little or no effect on the level of employment, but it does hurt growth in employment for years after the increase goes into effect.
Slow Progress for Fast-Food Workers
In recent weeks, fast-food workers have gone on strike in seven U.S. cities. Their demand for a $15-per-hour minimum wage in their industry – about $30,000 per year for a full-time worker, typically with no benefits – has underscored just how low the $7.2