Nathan Wilmers

Faculty

Nathan Wilmers

About

Nathan Wilmers is the Sarofim Family Career Development Professor and an Assistant Professor of Work and Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is a member of the Institute for Work and Employment Research and affiliated with the Economic Sociology program. For the most up-to-date information on his research, please see his personal website at www.nathanwilmers.com.

Wilmers researches wage and earnings inequality, economic sociology, and the sociology of labor. In his empirical research, he studies how wage stagnation and rising earnings inequality result from weakening labor market institutions, changing market power, and job restructuring. More broadly, he is interested in bringing insights from economic sociology to the study of labor markets and the wage structure. His research has been published in the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Sociology, and Social Forces.

Wilmers holds a BA in philosophy from the University of Chicago and an MA and PhD in sociology from Harvard University.

 

Publications

"Solidarity Within and Across Workplaces: How Cross-Workplace Coordination Affects Earnings Inequality."

Wilmers, Nathan. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences Vol. 5, No. 4 (2019): 190-215.

"Do the Poor Pay More for Housing? Exploitation, Profit, and Risk in Rental Markets."

Desmond, Matthew, and Nathan Wilmers. American Journal of Sociology Vol. 124, No. 4 (2019): 1090-1124.

"Wage Stagnation and Buyer Power: How Buyer-Supplier Relations Affect U.S. Workers’ Wages, 1978-2014."

Wilmers, Nathan. American Sociological Review Vol. 83, No. 2 (2018): 213-242.

"Sociological Perspectives on Economic Inequality."

Wilmers, Nathan. In Cambridge Handbook of Sociology, edited by Kathleen Odell Korgen, 245-246. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

"Does Consumer Demand Reproduce Inequality? High-income Consumers, Vertical Differentiation and the Wage Structure."

Wilmers, Nathan. American Journal of Sociology Vol. 123, No. 1 (2017): 178-231.

"Labor Unions as Activist Organizations: A Union Power Approach to Estimating Union Wage Effects."

Wilmers, Nathan. Social Forces Vol. 95, No. 4 (2017): 1451-1478.

Recent Insights

Ideas Made to Matter

Find your 'job turf' for salary bargaining power

Staking your space is a savvy move, though it can also contribute to workplace income inequality.

Mar 24, 2020
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Press

Study finds employees who perform specialized tasks earn 5% more

At a time when wage inequality and workplace fairness dominate the national conversation, a new study by Nathan Wilmers sheds light on the factors that drive pay disparities among workers.

Feb 25, 2020
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