Katharine Abraham

Katharine G. Abraham
Born	(1954-08-28) August 28, 1954
Occupation(s)	Economist, university professor
Years active	1980s–present
Known for	Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (1993–2001); member of the Council of Economic Advisers (2011–2013)

Katharine G. Abraham (born August 28, 1954) is a prominent American economist and holds the title of Distinguished University Professor specializing in economics and survey methodology at the University of Maryland. She led the Bureau of Labor Statistics as commissioner from 1993 until 2001 and was appointed to the Council of Economic Advisers between 2011 and 2013. In 2022, Abraham was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, and she is set to assume the role of President-Elect for the American Economic Association in 2024.

Education

Abraham completed her undergraduate studies with a Bachelor of Science degree in economics at Iowa State University in 1976, followed by a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 1982.

Career

Her early academic career included positions as an assistant professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and as a research associate at the Brookings Institution. She joined the faculty at the University of Maryland in 1988.

During her tenure as commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Abraham launched the American Time Use Survey, obtained funding to establish the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, and created the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee. She provided extensive congressional testimony concerning revisions to the Consumer Price Index, advocating for changes grounded in impartial research. Additionally, she broadened service price data within the Producer Price Index, enhanced the Current Employment Statistics program by substituting quota sampling with probability-based sampling, expedited reporting on employment and wage figures, and improved wage data collection in the Occupational Employment Statistics program.

Between 2016 and 2017, Abraham chaired the Commission on Evidence Based Policymaking, whose findings contributed significantly to shaping the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act enacted in 2018.

Her scholarly interests encompass unemployment dynamics, labor market vacancies, wage trends, comparative labor market analysis across the United States, Europe, and Japan, policies related to work-sharing, internal labor market structures, developments within the gig economy, as well as methodologies for quantifying both market and nonmarket economic activities.

Awards

Abraham serves as a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research and holds an honorary doctorate from Iowa State University. Among her accolades are the Julius Shiskin Award for Economic Statistics (2002), Roger Herriot Award for Innovation in Federal Statistics (2010), and the Susan C. Eaton Scholar-Practitioner Award from the Labor and Employment Relations Association (2013). In 2020, she was honored as a Distinguished Fellow by the American Economic Association. She is also recognized as a fellow of both the American Statistical Association and the Society of Labor Economists, and was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences that same year.

Selected bibliography

Books

• Abraham, Katharine G., and Robert B. McKersie. New developments in the labor market: toward a new institutional paradigm. MIT Press, 1990.
• Abraham, Katharine G., and Susan N. Houseman. Job security in America: lessons from Germany. Brookings Institution, 1993.
• Abraham, Katharine G., and Christopher D. Mackie. Beyond the market designing nonmarket accounts for the United States. National Academies Press, 2005.
• Abraham, Katharine G., James R. Spletzer, and Michael J. Harper. Labor in the new economy. University of Chicago Press, 2010.

Journal articles

• Abraham, Katharine G., and Susan N. Houseman. "Female workers as a buffer in the Japanese economy." The American Economic Review 83, no. 2 (1993): 45–51.
• Abraham, Katharine G., and Susan N. Houseman. "Job security in America: a better approach." The Brookings Review 11, no. 3 (1993): 34–35.
• Abraham, Katharine G., and John C. Haltiwanger. "Real wages and the business cycle." Journal of Economic Literature 33, no. 3 (1995): 1215–1264.
• Abraham, Katharine G. "Toward a cost-of-living index: progress and prospects." Journal of Economic Perspectives 17, no. 1 (2003): 45–58.
• Abraham, Katharine G., Aaron Maitland, and Suzanne M. Bianchi. "Nonresponse in the American time use survey: who is missing from the data and how much does it matter?" Public Opinion Quarterly 70, no. 5 (2006): 676–703.
• Abraham, Katharine G., and James R. Spletzer. "New evidence on the returns to job skills." The American Economic Review 99, no. 2 (2009): 52–57.
• Abraham, Katharine G., John C. Haltiwanger, Kristin Sandusky, and James R. Spletzer. "Exploring differences in employment between household and establishment data." Journal of Labor Economics 31, no. S1 (2013): S129–S172.
• Abraham, Katharine G., and Susan N. Houseman. "Short-time compensation as a tool to mitigate job loss? Evidence on the U.S. experience during the recent recession." Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society 53, no. 4 (2014): 543–567.
• Abraham, Katharine G., and John C. Haltiwanger. "The Consequences of Long Term Unemployment: Evidence from Matched Employer-Employee Data." ILR Review 72, no. 2 (2019): 266–299.

Working papers and National Bureau of Economic Research papers.