Aaron Sojourner is an American economist and senior researcher at the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. He was formerly an associate professor of economics at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...

Carlson School of Management The Curtis L. Carlson School of Management is the business school of the University of Minnesota, a public research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota. The Carlson School offers undergraduate and graduate degr ...

and senior economist for the

Council of Economic Advisers The Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) is a United States agency within the Executive Office of the President established in 1946, which advises the president of the United States on economic policy. The CEA provides much of the empirical resea ...

. His work has been widely covered by the media, particularly on the impact of the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

on the labor market in the United States.

Biography

Sojourner was raised largely in

Washington, DC Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and Federal district of the United States, federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from ...

by parents active in the

Mississippi Mississippi ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Alabama to the east, the Gulf of Mexico to the south, Louisiana to the s ...

Civil Rights Movement who had recently changed their names to "Sojourner" in honor of

Sojourner Truth Sojourner Truth (; born Isabella Bomefree; November 26, 1883) was an American Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist and activist for African-American civil rights, women's rights, and Temperance movement, alcohol temperance. Truth was ...

. He is a graduate of

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

, the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

Harris School of Public Policy The University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy is the public policy graduate school of the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is located on the University of Chicago's main campus in Hyde Park. The school ...

, and

Northwestern University Northwestern University (NU) is a Private university, private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest University charter, chartered university in ...

Research

Sojourner's research has focused on labor market institutions, particularly

labor unions A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages ...

, hiring in the education sector, and consumer financial decisions. During the

, he wrote widely cited

forecasts Forecasting is the process of making predictions based on past and present data. Later these can be compared with what actually happens. For example, a company might estimate their revenue in the next year, then compare it against the actual resu ...

of new

unemployment insurance Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is the proportion of people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for work du ...

claims based on analyses of

Google Trends Google Trends is a website by Google that analyzes the popularity of top search queries in Google Search across various regions and languages. The website uses graphs to compare the search volume of different queries over a certain period of ti ...

data, analyses of how the pandemic would reduce childcare access, a study of screening practices in the workplace, and research on work on which employees advocate for workplace safety practices to protect themselves. Sojourner's 2020 paper "Physician–patient racial concordance" was debunked in 2024.

Selected works

* Duncan, Greg J., and Aaron J. Sojourner. "Can intensive early childhood intervention programs eliminate income-based cognitive and achievement gaps?." Journal of Human Resources 48, no. 4 (2013): 945–968. * Goda, Gopi Shah, Colleen Flaherty Manchester, and Aaron J. Sojourner. "What will my account really be worth? Experimental evidence on how retirement income projections affect saving." Journal of Public Economics 119 (2014): 80–92. * Sojourner, Aaron J., Elton Mykerezi, and Kristine L. West. "Teacher pay reform and productivity panel data evidence from adoptions of Q-Comp in Minnesota." Journal of Human Resources 49, no. 4 (2014): 945–981. * Sojourner, Aaron J., Brigham R. Frandsen, Robert J. Town, David C. Grabowski, and Min M. Chen. "Impacts of unionization on quality and productivity: Regression discontinuity evidence from nursing homes." ILR Review 68, no. 4 (2015): 771–806. * Sojourner, Aaron J. "Do unions promote members' electoral office holding? Evidence from correlates of state legislatures' occupational shares." ILR Review 66, no. 2 (2013): 467–486. * Greenwood, Brad N., Rachel R. Hardeman, Laura Huang, and Aaron Sojourner. "Physician–patient racial concordance and disparities in birthing mortality for newborns." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117, no. 35 (2020): 21194–21200.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sojourner, Aaron 21st-century American economists American labor economists Living people Yale University alumni University of Chicago alumni Northwestern University alumni University of Minnesota faculty Year of birth missing (living people)