Henry Farber on his path from Teamster to one of the preeminent researchers of labor economics

Henry Farber, Hughes-Rogers Professor of Economics emeritus at Princeton University, discusses his early life growing up in an industrial, working-class town in New Jersey, his early interest in labor unions and his nearly fifty-year-long study of labor economics. 

In this episode, Farber and Ashenfelter discuss:

• Farber’s youth growing up in working-class Linden, New Jersey, and his early interest in labor unions. “... in high school for a history project, I wrote a paper about Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters and David Beck and the Teamsters, and I was always interested in unions.”
• Farber’s schooling at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he majored in economics, and how his subsequent job as a member of the Teamster’s union in a redwood warehouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey, inspired his decision to attend Cornell’s Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) School. “I said, ‘boy, I'm waking up at five o'clock every morning to get there. There must be an easier way to earn a living.’ So, I decided I'm interested in unions, let me study unions. And the only place I'd ever heard of where you could study unions was the ILR School at Cornell.” 
• Farber’s first academic appointment at MIT and his research on the decline in union density in the U.S; the use of arbitration to resolve labor disputes; and the impact of layoffs on workers over time. 
• Farber’s love for and commitment to teaching, especially teaching economics to the general student body. “...I think economics is really important to being a good citizen…To be a good citizen you should understand something about economics, and for many of the students in the big principles class, it might be the only economics they're going to see.” 
• Farber’s opinion of the way labor economists are currently doing their research. “I like the way labor economists are doing their work, and in fact, this is a very interesting time for labor economics. We are drowning in data with many new sources such as matched employer-employee data from an increasing number of countries that allows us to study many questions in detail.” 

Henry Farber earned his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1977. He is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of Economics emeritus and a Senior Scholar in the Industrial Relations Section at Princeton University. In addition to his faculty position at Princeton, Farber is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a Research Fellow of the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). He is also a Fellow of the Econometric Society, the Society of Labor Economists, and the Labor and Employment Relations Association. "The Work Goes On"—a podcast produced by Princeton's Industrial Relations Section (IR Section)—is an oral history of industrial relations and labor economics hosted by Princeton's Orley Ashenfelter.