Whitney Zhang ’21 believes within the significance of valuing employees no matter the place they match into an organizational chart.
Zhang is a PhD scholar in MIT’s Division of Economics finding out labor economics. She explores how the technological and managerial selections corporations make have an effect on employees throughout the pay spectrum.
“I’ve been taken with economics, financial impacts, and associated social points for a very long time,” says Zhang, who majored in mathematical economics as an undergraduate. “I needed to use my math abilities to see how we may enhance insurance policies and their results.”
Zhang is taken with enhance circumstances for employees. She believes it’s essential to construct relationships with policymakers, specializing in an evidence-driven strategy to coverage, whereas at all times remembering to heart these the insurance policies could have an effect on. “We now have to recollect the folks whose lives are impacted by enterprise operations and laws,” she says.
She’s additionally conscious of the advanced intermixture of politics, social standing, and monetary obligations organizations and their workers must navigate.
“Although I’m finding out employees, it’s essential to think about your complete advanced ecosystem when fixing for these sorts of challenges, together with agency incentives and world financial circumstances,” she says.
The intersection of tech and labor coverage
Zhang started investigating worker productiveness, synthetic intelligence, and associated financial and labor market phenomena early in her time as a doctoral scholar, collaborating often with fellow PhD college students within the division.
A collaboration with economics doctoral scholar Shakked Noy yielded the 2023 examine investigating ChatGPT as a software to enhance productiveness. Their analysis discovered it considerably elevated employees’ productiveness on writing duties, most so for employees who initially carried out the worst on the duties.
“This was one of many earliest items of proof on the productiveness results of generative AI, and contributed to offering concrete knowledge on how impactful all these instruments could be within the office and on the labor market,” Zhang says.
In different ongoing analysis — “Determinants of Irregular Employee Schedules” — Zhang is utilizing knowledge from a payroll supplier to look at scheduling unpredictability, investigating why corporations make use of unpredictable schedules and the way these schedules have an effect on low-wage workers’ high quality of life.
The scheduling venture, performed with MIT economics PhD scholar Nathan Lazarus, is motivated, partly, by present sociological proof that low-wage employees’ unpredictable schedules are related to worse sleep and well-being. “We’ve seen a relationship between increased turnover and inconsistent, insufficient schedules, which suggests employees dis-prefer these sorts of schedules,” Zhang says.
At an educational roundtable, Zhang introduced her outcomes to Starbucks workers concerned in scheduling and staffing. The attendees needed to be taught extra about how completely different scheduling practices impacted employees and their productiveness. “These are the sorts of questions that might reveal helpful info for small companies, giant firms, and others,” she says.
By conducting this analysis, Zhang hopes to higher perceive whether or not or not scheduling laws can enhance affected workers’ high quality of life, whereas additionally contemplating potential unintended penalties. “Why are these schedules set the best way they’re set?” she asks. “Do companies with these sorts of schedules require elevated regulation?”
One other venture, performed with MIT economics doctoral scholar Arjun Ramani, examines the linkages between offshoring, distant work, and associated outcomes. “Do the technological and managerial practices which have made distant work potential additional facilitate offshoring?” she asks. “Do organizations see important beneficial properties in effectivity? What are the impacts on U.S. and offshore employees?”
Her work is being funded by way of the Nationwide Science Basis Graduate Analysis Fellowship Program and the Washington Heart for Equitable Progress.
Placing folks on the heart
Zhang has noticed the completely different sorts of individuals economics and better training may convey collectively. She adopted a twin enrollment observe in highschool, finishing college-level programs with college students from throughout a wide range of demographic identities. “I loved centering folks in my work,” she says. “Taking lessons with a various group of scholars, together with veterans and moms returning to high school to finish their research, made me extra inquisitive about socioeconomic points and the insurance policies related to them.”
She later enrolled at MIT, the place she participated within the Undergraduate Analysis Alternatives Program (UROP). She additionally accomplished an internship on the World Financial institution, labored as a summer season analyst on the Federal Reserve Financial institution of New York, and labored as an assistant for a various college cohort together with MIT economists David Autor, Jon Gruber, and Nina Roussille. Autor is her major advisor on her doctoral analysis, a mentor she cites as a major affect.
“[Autor’s] course, 14.03 (Microeconomics and Public Coverage), cemented connections between idea and apply,” she says. “I believed the category was revelatory in displaying the sorts of questions economics can reply.”
Doctoral examine has revealed fascinating pathways of investigation for Zhang, as have her relationships together with her scholar friends and different college. She has, for instance, leveraged college connections to achieve entry to hourly wage knowledge in assist of her scheduling and worker impacts work. “Typically, economists have had administrative knowledge on earnings, however not on hours,” she notes.
Zhang’s give attention to bettering others’ lives extends to her work outdoors the classroom. She’s a mentor for the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Heart Faculty Entry Program and a member of MIT’s Graduate Christian Fellowship group. When she’s not having fun with spicy soups or paddling on the Charles, she takes benefit of alternatives to decompress together with her artwork at W20 Arts Studios.
“I needed to create time for myself outdoors of analysis and the classroom,” she says.
Zhang cites the advantages of MIT’s give attention to cross-collaboration and inspiring college students to discover different disciplines. As an undergraduate, Zhang minored in laptop science, which taught her coding abilities essential to her knowledge work. Publicity to engineering additionally led her to change into extra taken with questions round how expertise and employees work together.
Working with different students within the division has improved how Zhang conducts inquiries. “I’ve change into the type of well-rounded scholar {and professional} who can establish and quantify impacts, which is invaluable for future initiatives,” she says. Publicity to completely different educational and analysis areas, Zhang argues, helps enhance entry to concepts and data.
