The Economics of Work with Ben Zweig

Ben Zweig
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Work is changing, and the forces shaping it are endlessly fascinating. In The Economics of Work, Ben Zweig sits down with leading economists, researchers, and thinkers to explore the ideas that define how we work, why we work, and what the future of work could look like. Each conversation dives deep into the literature, economic theory, and the philosophical questions that underlie the world of labor.

  1. 1d ago

    Anna Stansbury - Worker Power, Wages, and What's Gone Wrong in the American Labor Market

    The labor share of income has dropped from roughly two thirds to below sixty percent since the early 1980s. The US looks like an outlier even among rich countries. In this episode, Ben sits down with Anna Stansbury, MIT economist and co-author with Larry Summers of influential work on worker power, to dig into what's driving wage stagnation and which institutions might fix it. Topics covered: The three theories of the declining labor share: globalization, technology, and the fall of worker power, and why the US looks different from almost everywhere elseWhy monopsony's wage effect is probably 5 to 10 percent below competitive wages, not the 30 to 50 percent implied by some elasticity estimatesWhy the more important story may be rent attribution: who captures firm profits when competition declines, and why that share has shifted toward capitalWhat unions are for, which of their functions are worth preserving, and why the answer depends heavily on what you think the underlying structure of the economy actually isSectoral bargaining in Germany and Scandinavia, why those systems are more resilient than US-style firm-level organizing, and the Swedish mine case that shows what happens when AI reclassifies a job mid-negotiationWhy what workers get from work can't be reduced to wages, and why the human dimensions of jobs remain the most underestimated piece of the puzzleAbout Anna Stansbury: Anna Stansbury is an assistant professor at MIT Sloan School of Management and a faculty research fellow at the NBER. Her research focuses on labor markets, worker power, and the macroeconomics of wages and inequality. She is co-author, with Lawrence Summers, of influential work on the role of worker power in explaining the declining labor share of income. Follow Anna on Twitter/X: https://x.com/annastansbury Follow Ben on LinkedIn Follow us on LinkedIn Sign up for our Newsletter Visit our website for more information Get in touch with us at info@reveliolabs.com

    Anna Stansbury - Worker Power, Wages, and What's Gone Wrong in the American Labor Market

  2. Sep 16

    Paul Osterman - The Disposable Worker: How Firms Learned to Stop Investing in People

    The unspoken employment contract, characterized by stable jobs, career ladders, wages that rose with productivity, didn't dissolve overnight. Firms chipped away at it deliberately, and the result is a labor market organized around workers who were never meant to stay. Topics covered: Contractors, freelancers, and marginal workers: the three categories of disposable workWhy using staffing firms drives wages downThe McKinsey statistic that says the quiet part out loud: 95% of a firm's value comes from 5% of its employeesWhy "at will" employment is a spectrum, not a switch, and why disposable workers sit at a different end of it entirelyThe hidden cost firms pay: contractors and marginal workers report substantially less organizational commitment and willingness to put in extra effortWhat Walmart, Google, and Activision show about the levers that have moved firm behavior when political pressure became realCheck out Paul's new book, Disposable Workers: https://a.co/d/05hPXELl About Paul Osterman: Paul Osterman is professor emeritus at the MIT Sloan School of Management and one of the leading figures in labor economics and workforce policy. His research spans internal labor markets, job quality, low-wage work, and workforce development. He is the author of Disposable Workers and several other foundational books on work and employment in America. Research mentioned: Susan Houseman's work on flexible staffing arrangements: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=jSDQZyMAAAAJ&citation_for_view=jSDQZyMAAAAJ:u5HHmVD_uO8C Follow Ben on LinkedIn Follow us on LinkedIn Sign up for our Newsletter Visit our website for more information Get in touch with us at info@reveliolabs.com

    Paul Osterman - The Disposable Worker: How Firms Learned to Stop Investing in People

  3. Sep 9

    David Deming - What's Happening to Young Workers, and What College Should Do About It

    For the first time in recent history, new college graduates have a higher unemployment rate than the general population. The causes are tangled, the implications are serious, and universities are caught in the middle. In this episode, Ben sits down with David Deming, Harvard economist and Dean of Harvard College, to work through what's driving the shift and what it means for how we think about education, expertise, and careers. Topics covered: Why the graduate unemployment rate is elevated and why remote work, AI, and post-pandemic labor hoarding are all suspects that probably worked togetherHow remote work accelerated AI automation by first digitizing and codifying knowledge workWhy you can beat AI on depth but not breadth, and how deep expertise still produces something AI doesn't have: taste and judgmentWhat taste actually is, why doing the work yourself is the only way to develop it, and why taking the summary first destroys itWhy college needs to move toward applied learning, and why that's not the same thing as vocational trainingHow academia is secretly closer to entrepreneurship than most people expectAbout David Deming: David Deming is a professor of economics at Harvard University and Dean of Harvard College. His research focuses on education, skills, and the labor market. He writes the Substack Fork Lightning and hosts the podcast The Context Window. Check out David’s substack: https://forklightning.substack.com/ Check out The Context Window Podcast: https://thecontextwindowpodcast.substack.com/ Follow Ben on LinkedIn Follow us on LinkedIn Sign up for our Newsletter Visit our website for more information Get in touch with us at info@reveliolabs.com

    David Deming - What's Happening to Young Workers, and What College Should Do About It

  4. Sep 2

    Ioana Marinescu - Why Workers Are Underpaid, and What We Could Do About It

    Most people earn less than they're worth. Not because they're not productive, but because the labor market isn't nearly as competitive as it could be. In this episode, Ben sits down with Ioana Marinescu, professor at Penn and one of the leading researchers on labor market power, to dig into what monopsony actually means, why it matters, and what it would take to fix it. Topics covered: What a perfectly competitive labor market would look like and how far we are from itWhy the problem isn't just low wages but also hours, conditions, scheduling, and the terms of work that workers can't individually negotiateWhy unions and competition aren't simply substitutesHow to define a labor marketThe sleepy monopolist hypothesis: whether product market concentration reduces firms' incentive to hire the best peopleNon-compete agreementsJob search and online platforms: how the structure of matching markets shapes who finds work, at what wage, and how quicklyWhy AI in public policy may be one of the most important and underrated frontiersAbout Ioana Marinescu: Ioana Marinescu is a professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania and a research associate at the NBER. Her research spans labor market competition and monopsony, online job search, non-compete agreements, and the labor market effects of basic income programs. She is one of the leading voices applying antitrust frameworks to labor markets. Check out Ioana's website Follow Ben on LinkedIn Follow us on LinkedIn Sign up for our Newsletter Visit our website for more information Get in touch with us at info@reveliolabs.com

    Ioana Marinescu - Why Workers Are Underpaid, and What We Could Do About It

  5. Aug 26

    Roberto Rigobon - Why We're Getting Worse at Measuring

    The economy is changing faster than our ability to track it. And the data sources we rely on most, like surveys, official statistics, and government indices, were designed for a world that no longer exists. In this episode, Ben sits down with Roberto Rigobon, MIT economist and founder of the Billion Prices Project, to explore what gets lost when measurement fails. Topics covered: Why survey response rates have collapsedDesigned data vs. organic dataWhy statistical agencies aren't slow out of ignorance but because the cost of a measurement error is catastrophicWhy CO2 emissions are almost certainly being underestimated by a huge marginWhy globalization turned workers into widgetsThe monopoly problem: why the US has quietly stopped having real markets in sector after sector, and what that has to do with political polarizationWhy authentic human collective action is what Roberto believes AI will never fully replicateAbout Roberto Rigobon: Roberto Rigobon is a professor of applied economics at MIT's Sloan School of Management and co-founder of the Billion Prices Project, which pioneered the use of online prices to construct real-time inflation indices. His research spans international finance, economic measurement, labor market ethics, and the economics of human trafficking, CO2 emissions, and workplace behavior. Check out the Billion Prices Project Follow Ben on LinkedIn Follow us on LinkedIn Sign up for our Newsletter Visit our website for more information Get in touch with us at info@reveliolabs.com

    Roberto Rigobon - Why We're Getting Worse at Measuring

  6. Aug 19

    Deena Mousa - What AI Means for the Developing World

    The standard debate about AI and jobs is a rich-country debate. But for billions of people in low- and middle-income countries, the stakes and the story look completely different. In this episode, Ben sits down with Deena Mousa, program officer at Coefficient Giving and writer on AI and global development, to explore what gets missed when we only think about AI's impact through a Western lens. Topics covered: Why there are still so many radiologists, and what the gap between benchmark performance and real-world clinical performance tells us about AI adoption more broadlyHow automation demand works in reverse: why making scans faster and cheaper expands the complexity of what radiologists are asked to do, not just the volumeWhy low-income countries are in a fundamentally different situation with both their access to AI and how it can address their needs.The service export threat: why the BPO and outsourcing sectors in countries like the Philippines and India may face a more immediate AI disruption than any manufacturing sectorWhy "supply creates its own demand" doesn't automatically work for development, and the Malawi example of why breakout growth is the exception, not the ruleThe difference between low-income and middle-income countries, and why bundling them into "LMICs" obscures the very different things they need to doWhy some Western social progress movements can inadvertently harm the workers they're meant to protectAbout Deena Mousa: Deena Mousa is a program officer at Coefficient Giving, formerly Open Philanthropy, where she focuses on the intersection of AI and global development. She writes on Substack about how transformative technology reshapes economic opportunity across the world. Check out Deena’s substack Check out Deena on X Follow Ben on LinkedIn Follow us on LinkedIn Sign up for our Newsletter Visit our website for more information Get in touch with us at info@reveliolabs.com

    Deena Mousa - What AI Means for the Developing World

  7. Aug 12

    Luis Garicano - Why the Most Valuable Work Is the Hardest to Automate

    The jobs most protected from AI aren't necessarily the most credentialed ones. They're the ones where tasks are so tightly bundled together that pulling one thread unravels the whole thing. In this episode, Ben sits down with Luis Garicano, LSE professor and author of Messy Jobs, to dig into what makes some work durable, how organizations need to reconfigure around AI, and why Europe may be in serious trouble. Topics covered: Clean vs. messy jobs: why single-task, easily reinforced work is what AI takes firstThe unbundling productivity trade-off: why breaking jobs apart unlocks more growth but also drives wages down as labor supply floods a narrower set of tasksWhy technology without business process reconfiguration produces almost no productivity gainsThe junior professional problem in the current landscapeWhy reduced job mobility might inadvertently push firms back toward German-style on-the-job trainingEurope's stagnation trapAbout Luis Garicano: Luis Garicano is a professor of economics and strategy at the London School of Economics and a former member of the European Parliament. His research focuses on the economics of organizations, technology, and productivity. Check out Luis’s book Messy Jobs here: https://a.co/d/0hvVSmnS Check out Luis’s substack: https://substack.com/@luisgaricano Follow Ben on LinkedIn Follow us on LinkedIn Sign up for our Newsletter Visit our website for more information Get in touch with us at info@reveliolabs.com

    Luis Garicano - Why the Most Valuable Work Is the Hardest to Automate

  8. Aug 5

    Ronnie Chatterji - How The Labor Market Looks From Inside Open AI

    What does it look like to do economics from inside the AI revolution with access to data nobody else has, and questions nobody has figured out how to answer yet? In this episode, Ben sits down with Ronnie Chatterji, chief economist at OpenAI, to pull back the curtain on how economic research gets done at a frontier AI lab. Topics covered: Why the right time horizon for AI economics is a mix of real-time, medium-term, and scenario planningWhy you can't afford to be late to recursive self-improvement even when it feels far awayWhat OpenAI's own labor data is showingThe four-category job framework: which roles are at risk, which will be reorganized, which will expand as prices fall, and which are largely insulatedThe Codex paper: what OpenAI's internal data on agentic coding tool adoption reveals about how long it takes different functions to catch up with one anotherExtensive vs. intensive margin: why 2025 was about getting firms to adopt AI at all, and why 2026 is about measuring how deeply they're using itAI and entrepreneurship: whether the falling cost of starting a business is producing more solo firms, thicker startup markets, or just more noiseWhether AI favors small firms that can now punch above their weight, or large firms with the data, governance, and training capacity to go deeperB2B Signals: what OpenAI's enterprise data set reveals about the gap between power users and median usersThe globalization of AI: which countries are growing fastest in AI usageAbout Ronnie Chatterji: Ronnie Chatterji is the chief economist at OpenAI, where he leads research on AI's impact on jobs, growth, and enterprise. He previously served as chief economist at the U.S. Department of Commerce and as a professor at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. His research spans entrepreneurship, innovation, and the economics of technology adoption. Check out Ronnie's research at openai.com/signals Follow Ben on LinkedIn Follow us on LinkedIn Sign up for our Newsletter Visit our website for more information Get in touch with us at info@reveliolabs.com

    Ronnie Chatterji - How The Labor Market Looks From Inside Open AI
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About

Work is changing, and the forces shaping it are endlessly fascinating. In The Economics of Work, Ben Zweig sits down with leading economists, researchers, and thinkers to explore the ideas that define how we work, why we work, and what the future of work could look like. Each conversation dives deep into the literature, economic theory, and the philosophical questions that underlie the world of labor.

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