Joel Mittleman

I am a labor economist who studies education policy

Today in my tiny world:

Commissioner of labor statistics fired bc president did not like jobs data

Staff at education science agency terminated

Old money: Campaign finance and gerontocracy in the United States Politicians in the United States rank among the oldest globally. This study examines how money in politics contributes to age inequality in political …

@adambonica.bsky.social and I are economists now (economist salary coming soon, I imagine)

Ungated until the end of September: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The British Journal of Sociology Call for Papers The precarity of work and life: how insecurity equalizes and stratifies people’s experiences Submission deadline: Tuesday, 2 September 2025

Just a month left until the deadline for the BJS special issue that Lorenza Antonucci and I are co-editing on "The Precarity of Work and Life," focusing on people's experiences with socioeconomic insecurity! We've heard about some really interesting papers in progress so far--consider submitting!

Assistant Professor - Madison, Wisconsin, United States Current Employees: If you are currently employed at any of the Universities of Wisconsin, log in to Workday to apply through the internal application process.Job Category:FacultyEmployment Type:Regula...

We're hiring! Please share with your networks!

The Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison invites applications for a tenure-track position at the rank of assistant professor in the field of demography of health and aging beginning in August 2026
jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/assista...

Some mail arrived this morning.

A picture of the toronto skyline

🚨 Job alert: The Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto is hiring an Assistant Professor in the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.
jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-...

I'll be at ASA and would be happy to chat with interested candidates. Please share widely! #Socsky

Wisconsin Supreme Court Strikes Down 1849 Abortion Ban

Well this is a first. My 2004 ASR article with Nicola Beisel on abortion in the 19th century was cited in the recent Wisconsin Supreme Court decision striking down the state's 1849 abortion ban!
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/u...

Nice to see our recent AJS article featured in Contexts! @evangelinewarren.com

For MAGA, Ignorance is Strength Research cuts aren’t about shrinking government, they’re about killing science

"two first-rate economists, David Cutler and Ed Glaeser, have made a stab at estimating the impact of cuts at NIH. Their analysis suggests that these cuts might save $500 billion in federal spending over the next 25 years — while imposing more than $8 trillion in losses."

Schools are increasingly vulnerable to climate change & vital to advancing solutions.

Our synthesis illustrates why efforts to create more resilient schools & a more sustainable future need to be a central focus of education research, policy & practice.

edworkingpapers.com/ai25-1238

🧵

New preprint 💥

In 2020, @ianlundberg.bsky.social wrote a fabulous paper showing that cousin correlations don’t have to imply extended family effects.

I put that idea to the test using NLSY data—and he’s right! The patterns fit a dynamic first-order Markov model.

#sociology

osf.io/preprints/so...

Request for Articles - Gender Inequality Beyond Categories: CALL FOR ARTICLES - RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences - Issue on Gender Inequality Beyond Categories: Femininity, Masculinity And Gender Expression

NEW! Call for papers for @russellsagefdn.bsky.social journal issue on "Gender Inequality Beyond Categories: Femininity, Masculinity and Gender Expression" edited by @stanfordsoc.bsky.social's Aliya Saperstein, @laurel-westbrook.bsky.social, & Bianca Wilson.

www.russellsage.org/request-arti...

I am really pleased to be joining the @natlhumanities.bsky.social‬ this year. It’s a critical time for cultural workers to be working. It is a dangerous time for the institutions that make that work possible. In so many ways, I am keenly aware of what this honor means in this moment.

Jim Ryan was dean when I was a PhD student at HGSE. I hold him in very high esteem. As a small anecdote, when I faced some serious medical issues as a first year student, he kindly wrote me a personal note expressing support and well wishes. I am really saddened by this.

On the Skrmetti decision, I am trying to hold two things at the same time:

1) it's an awful decision - kids will suffer, supportive families will have to make impossible choices.

2) trans and queer people have survived a LOT, even just in my lifetime, and we won't be erased and we won't give up.

📢BREAKING: Just left the courthouse for our NIH grant termination case

Judge ruled terminations are “VOID & ILLEGAL”

As a plaintiff, I felt a wave of relief & hope; he acknowledged the discrimination & harm

Closed by asking, ‘Have we fallen so low? Have we no shame?’

2025 Section on Sexualities Distinguished Article Award Winner: Winer, Canton, Carroll, Megan, Yang, Yuchen, Linder, Katherine, & Miles, Brittney. (2024). “'I Didn’t Know Ace Was a Thing': Bisexuality and pansexuality as identity pathways in asexual identity formation." Sexualities, 27(1-2), 267-289. https://doi.org/10.1177/13634607221085485 Honorable Mention: Yang, Tori Shucheng, Changhui Song, and Hui Xie. (2025). "Reworking Identity, Reworking Heteronormativity: The Case of Tongqi in China." Gender & Society 39(1), 63-90. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/08912432241301020

Our paper won the Distinguished Article Award from the ASA @asanews.bsky.social Sexualities Section!!!
Here's the link to our article: doi.org/10.1177/1363...

I am honored and thrilled to have The Last Human Job win this award. Thanks to ASA & the many who read/gave feedback along the way. This award is dedicated to all who do connective labor when it is under threat by data analytics & AI. Connecting is what makes us human! Let's preserve and protect it

Nonbinary and Transgender Identities and Earnings: Evidence from a National Census (Forthcoming Article) - We provide the first evidence from a large population Census on earnings disparities experienced by nonbinary people—those who do not exclusively identify as men or women—and t...

Forthcoming in AER: Insights: "Nonbinary and Transgender Identities and Earnings: Evidence from a National Census" by Christopher S. Carpenter, Donn Feir, Krishna Pendakur, and Casey Warman. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

Join @kevinguyan.bsky.social & me for a webinar on SOGISC data. Thanks to the American Statistical Association and its LGBTQ+ Advocacy Committee for hosting and creating this space. Hope to see you there! amstat.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Erin McDonnell's (@profmcdonnell.bsky.social) amazing new paper "Bureaucracy in Action: The Sociology of Public Administration" is online now at the Annual Review of Sociology. Check it out!!! @ndsociology.bsky.social @artslettersnd.bsky.social @asanews.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1146/annu...

Ugh, sorry to hear about the rejection: was that 64 days including external review, or it took 64 days for a desk reject?

Eek, two months of "awaiting decision" only to then switch back to "awaiting reviewer scores"? That's brutal.

Wow, what a valuable and long overdue effort, thanks!

Sociologists: Do you have recent experience submitting to ASR? What are review times like these days?

Congratulations to Jane Furey!

Educational attainment is a cumulative, racially stratified process. Attainment is also increasingly extending to older ages. But it is unknown whether education attained after age 25 – which I call educational upgrading – will reduce, expand, or maintain racial inequality established earlier in the life course. In this paper, I develop the racialized education careers framework to investigate how upgrading can reshape racial inequalities. The framework emphasizes two points: (1) racialized (dis)advantages accumulate across education transitions, and (2) education attained during different life stages can pay off heterogeneously. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979 cohort and a decomposition approach, I show educational upgrading contributes to Black-White economic inequality in two distinct ways. First, upgrading patterns expand Black-White economic inequality by reinforcing earlier-established educational inequalities. Second, the returns to upgrading favor Black people and reduce inequality. Because upgrading patterns and upgrading’s returns push inequality in different directions, educational upgrading maintains the Black-White earnings gap. Analyzing upgrading through the lens of racialized education careers provides insight into how education can maintain, rather than reduce or expand, racial inequality over the life course.

I chaired ASA's Population Section student paper award this year. We received nearly 30 excellent papers - it was a tough competition!

This year's winner was Jane Furey, “The Consequences of Racialized Education Careers: How Educational Upgrading Maintains Black-White Economic Inequality.” 1/3

Wow, congrats! UCLA is fortunate to have you!

Coming soon!

Notes from a so-called enemy’s classroom It wasn’t revolutionary. It was homework. But it was homework that asked: how do we build schools that work for all kids? Inclusion, after all, is the “I” in DEI. That’s what we’re thinking about toge...

In their telling, I lead my students in a kind of academic séance. We dim the lights, light the incense, & summon the ghosts of systemic injustice…we hand out guilt like condoms at first-year orientation. The accused? White, straight men, sentenced to 50 min of heavy sighs & punishing awareness.