Susan Houseman

Susan Houseman is a senior economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. Houseman chairs the Technical Advisory Committee to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and is a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research Conference on Research in Income and Wealth. Prior to joining the Upjohn Institute, Houseman was on the faculty at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy and was a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution. She received her doctorate in economics from Harvard University. Houseman’s research has examined the effects of labor market policies, including policies that support work sharing, on workforce adjustment in response to demand changes in the United States, Europe, and Japan. She currently is the principal investigator on a demonstration project funded by the Department of Labor that will test whether interventions designed to reduce perceived barriers to work share increase use of this option. Houseman’s other research has focused on employers’ use of temporary help employment, outsourcing, and nonstandard work arrangements and their implications for workers’ wages, benefits, and employment stability. Her research on outsourcing and offshoring also has highlighted measurement problems in U.S. statistics. With funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Bureau of Economic Analysis, she has conducted research and organized conferences on biases in price indexes, productivity, and output growth, along with other measurement problems arising from the growth of globalization.