Richard Freeman on the state of unions in the U.S., why few Americans pursue STEM degrees, and more

Richard Freeman, who holds the Herbert Ascherman Chair in Economics at Harvard University, joins the podcast to talk to Princeton’s Orley Ashenfelter about the early influences of Martin Segal and John Dunlap on his career, who pursues careers in STEM and why, and whether we can expect inequality at the bottom of the wage distribution, which shrunk during the pandemic for the first time in recent history, to continue its decline.

In this episode, Freeman and Ashenfelter discuss:

• Freeman’s decision to attend Dartmouth, despite an initial preference to stay in New York and hang out in Greenwich Village.
• What it was like studying under John Dunlap at Harvard.
• The genesis of Freeman’s early book, What Do Unions Do? 
• The benefits of strong research relationships between U.S. and Chinese scientists.
• The need for labor unions in the U.S.
• Why Freeman was uninvited from Milton Friedman’s seminar at the University of Chicago.
• The growth in the wages for the lowest-paid workers during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, and why trends in shrinking inequality won’t hold.

Freeman earned a PhD from Harvard University in 1969. Today, he serves as Faculty Co-director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, and as Co-Director of the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities. "The Work Goes On"—a podcast produced as Princeton's Industrial Relations Section (IR Section) celebrates its 100th anniversary—is an oral history of industrial relations and labor economics hosted by Princeton's Orley Ashenfelter.