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Jessie Hammerling is a Lead Researcher for the Technology and Work Program at the University of California’s Berkeley Labor Center. She studies changes in the organization of production in key industries and the consequences of these changes for workers and their communities. Her current work focuses on technological change in the workplace and domestic outsourcing in the U.S. Recent research has explored methods for estimating outsourcing trends across industries in the U.S., and a case study of food services that examines connections between outsourcing, financialization, and market concentration.
In previous years, Jessie worked with the Labor Center’s Green Economy Program, studying labor standards and training in the energy and construction sectors. Prior to joining the Labor Center, she worked at the Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS) in Madison, WI. Jessie holds a Ph.D. in geography from UC Davis and a master’s degree in public policy from UW-Madison.

Katharine G. Abraham is Professor of Economics and Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland. Her published research includes papers on outsourcing and alternative work arrangements; the work and retirement decisions of older Americans; student financial aid and college attendance; cyclical fluctuations in the labor market; and the measurement of economic activity.  She served as Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics from 1993 through 2001 and as a Member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2011 through 2013. 

Abraham was a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee on Contingent Work and Alternative Work Arrangements.  The Committee (which included Susan Houseman, Chair, and David Weil), published its report, Measuring Alternative Work Arrangements for Research and Policy, in 2020.  She currently serves on standing academic advisory committees convened by the Congressional Budget Office, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.  She is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association. 

Virginia Doellgast is the Anne Evans Estabrook Professor of Employment Relations and Dispute Resolution in the ILR School at Cornell University and a Senior Research Fellow at WSI-Hans Böckler Stiftung. Her research examines the relationship between labor market and collective bargaining institutions, inequality, and job quality, with a focus on the U.S. and Europe. She is the author of Disintegrating Democracy at Work and co-editor of Reconstructing Solidarity. Her forthcoming book Exit, Voice, and Solidarity compares labor responses to restructuring (outsourcing, downsizing, and performance management) in the telecommunications industry. She is currently studying the impact of digitalization and AI on job quality in the ICT services industry and ‘just transitions’ to e-mobility in the auto industry, based on comparative research in the U.S., Canada, Germany, and Norway.