Michael Reich

Michael Reich is Professor and Co-Chair of the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) of the University of California at Berkeley.  He served as Director of IRLE from 2004 to 2015. His research publications cover numerous areas of labor economics and political economy, including the economics of racial inequality; labor market segmentation; historical stages in U.S. labor markets; and the social structures of accumulation, high performance workplaces, union-management cooperation, Japanese labor-management systems, living wages, and minimum wages.

Reich's publications include 17 books and monographs, including When Mandates Work: Raising Labor Standards at the Local Level, with Ken Jacobs and Miranda Dietz.

Reich has also written over 130 papers, including these two landmark studies with James Parrott, A Minimum Compensation Standard for Seattle TNC Drivers and An Earnings Standard for New York City’s App-based Drivers: Economic Analysis and Policy Assessment.  Pay, Passengers and Profits: Effects of Employee Status for California TNC Drivers was published in October 2020.