Philip Moss is an economist and professor in the Department of Regional Economic and Social Development at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. His research concerns the impacts of structural change in the economy and within firms on the distribution of economic opportunity, on income and wage inequality, and on city and community level economic development strategies and the implications for low income residents. He has been working most recently on issues of job opportunities for different race and gender groups, on the changing circumstances of low-wage workers and low wage jobs, and on changing skill needs and skill development strategies of firms.

He was involved for several years in the Russell Sage/Ford/Rockefeller Foundations funded Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality doing employer based research to understand the barriers to employment of inner-minority workers. This work, co-authored with Chris Tilly, resulted in several journal articles, chapters in edited books, and in, Stories Employers Tell: Race, Skill, and Hiring in America, published by the Russell Sage Foundation in 2000.

He is currently engaged, with co-investigators Chris Till and Harold Salzman, in research, through the Rockefeller and Russell Sage Foundation’s Future of Work program, on the impacts of recent changes in management strategies and industrial structure on the quality and quantity of jobs, skill development, and career opportunities for entry-level workers in several industries. This project has resulted in three papers in edited books, with two additional papers in process. In addition, he is planning research on the limits of city economic development strategies based on the “creative” or “new economy” concept and the enterprise zone concept.