I am a professor of regional economic and social development at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.  I teach courses on economic development and research methods. In my research, I specialize in labor markets, with interests in inequality, urban development, and public policies directed toward better jobs. Although most of my research has been focused on the United States, I have traveled frequently to Latin America and the Caribbean over the past 30 years, and have written about development issues and social movements in Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, Mexico, and Central America.  I have recently broadened my research agenda to include a new emphasis on jobs in Mexico, as well as undertaking comparative analyses with European and Latin American colleagues. 

My books include Half a Job: Bad and Good Part-Time Jobs in a Changing Labor Market (Temple University Press, 1996), Glass Ceilings and Bottomless Pits: Women's Work, Women's Poverty (with Randy Albelda, South End Press, 1997), Work Under Capitalism (with Charles Tilly, Westview Press, 1998), Stories Employers Tell: Race, Skill, and Hiring in America (Russell Sage Foundation, 2001), co-authored with Philip Moss of RESD, and American Cities in Transition: The Changing Face of Urban Inequality (Russell Sage Foundation, 2001), edited with Alice O’Connor and Lawrence Bobo.  I have also published numerous articles in English and Spanish, including essays in the Handbook of Economic Sociology, the Elgar Companion to Feminist Economics, the Sourcebook on Labor Markets, Poverty and Social Welfare in America: An Encyclopedia, the Handbook on the Economics of Discrimination, and La Nueva Situación del Trabajo en Mexico 2000-2003 (The New Situation of Labor in Mexico 2000-2003).

In addition to conducting scholarly research, I served for 20 years (1986-2006) an editor of Dollars and Sense, a popular economics magazine, and frequently conduct research for advocacy groups, community organizations and labor unions. I served on the Program Committee and later the Board of Directors of Grassroots International from 1991-2003, ending that time as the Chair of the Board.  (I still work closely with Dollars and Sense and Grassroots International in an advisory capacity.)  Before becoming an academic, I spent eight years doing community and labor organizing.