Michael Schultz

I am a quantitative sociologist and social demographer who studies economic mobility, social policy, and workers’ careers. I am a Senior Research Scientist at the Evans School of Public Policy & Governance at the University of Washington. I write about economic mobility and the future of work on my substack blog Rolling Downhill.

I study the intersections of work, poverty, and structural inequality. My research is guided by the question of how social structures and institutions shape the outcomes of workers and households. Studying mobility using longitudinal data is at the center of my approach. When workers change jobs and wages, when households fall into and move out of poverty, the structures that shape these outcomes are more visible.

I take inspiration from the qualitative tradition in sociology in the sociology of work and organizations that investigates how social processes and political economy structure people’s lives. Some of my favorite books include Hochschild’s (1997) The Time Bind, Waldinger and Lichter’s (2003) How the Other Half Works, Reskin and Roos’ (1990) Job Queues, Gender Queues, Soss, Fording, and Schram’s (2011) Disciplining the Poor, and Prasad’s (2012) The Land of Too Much.