Lawrence Mishel is a distinguished fellow at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) after serving as president from 2002–2017. Mishel first joined EPI in 1987 as Director of Research. His leadership has helped build it into one of the nation’s premier research organization focused on U.S. living standards and labor markets.
Mishel’s primary research interests include labor markets, industrial relations, productivity, income distribution and education. Mishel has co-authored all 12 editions of The State of Working America, an analysis of all aspects of the U.S. labor market published by EPI from 1988 to 2012. He is author of the EPI report “Contingent Worker Survey is further evidence that we are not becoming a nation of freelancers,” and co-author of “Uber Drivers Are Not Entrepreneurs.”
Prior to joining EPI, Mishel was a professor at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations and an economist for various unions: AFSCME, the Steelworkers, Auto Workers and the Industrial Union Department of the AFL-CIO. Mishel holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.