In their groundbreaking new book MOVING THE NEEDLE: What Tight Labor Markets Do for the Poor, Katherine S. Newman and Elisabeth S. Jacobs explore what happens when jobs are plentiful and workers are hard to come by, showing how very low unemployment boosts wages at the bottom, improves benefits, lengthens job ladders, and pulls the unemployed into a booming job market.

MOVING THE NEEDLE: What Tight Labor Markets Do for the Poor

Katherine Newman is a sociologist and academic leader who has worked at UC Berkeley, Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, Johns Hopkins and the University of Massachusetts. She is the author of 15 books on aspects of inequality, poverty, inner city society, the working poor, upskilling and social mobility (upward and downward), school violence. Her books have won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, the Sidney Hilman Prize, and honorable mention for the C Wright Mills Award. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the recipient of awards for public scholarship from both the American Sociological Association and the American Anthropological Association. 

Elisabeth Jacobs is a Harvard-trained sociologist with two decades of experience at the intersection of scholarly research and public policy. Early in her career, she served as a policy advisor for the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions under Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and for the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress. Prior to joining the Urban Institute, Jacobs helped build the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, and served as a fellow at the Brookings Institution. At Urban, Jacobs co-founded and leads WorkRise, a research-to-action network for jobs, workers, and mobility. She is the author of myriad reports and briefs on aspects of inequality, poverty, and economic mobility, with an emphasis on translating high-quality scholarship into accessible, actionable insights for policymakers, practitioners, and other changemakers seeking to improve the lives of all Americans. 

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