Senior Research Fellow - Occupational Licensing & Labor Mobility

Workforce Intelligence Lab (WIL) is building a research network focused on workforce policy, labor-market measurement, worker mobility, and causal policy evaluation.

We are seeking a Senior Research Fellow — Occupational Licensing & Labor Mobility to support current and future research examining how occupational licensing, reciprocity, universal recognition, and related state regulatory reforms affect employment, wages, labor supply, interstate mobility, and employer hiring pressure.

This opportunity is particularly relevant to researchers with experience in labor economics, occupational regulation, interstate worker mobility, professional licensing, or state policy evaluation.

Current Research Opportunity

WIL is developing a quasi-experimental study examining whether state universal occupational licensing recognition policies change labor-market outcomes for licensed workers and occupations.

Potential research responsibilities may include:

• refining the research question and causal estimand;
• evaluating treatment and comparison-group construction;
• Difference-in-Differences, staggered DiD, event-study, or related quasi-experimental analysis;
• analyzing CPS, ACS/PUMS, OEWS, QWI/LEHD, or related labor-market datasets;
• developing occupation and licensing-policy crosswalks;
• evaluating interstate mobility, employment, wages, and labor-force outcomes;
• reviewing methodology and threats to identification;
• contributing to grant proposals and pre-analysis plans;
• conducting or supervising empirical analysis if a project is funded;
• contributing to academic manuscripts, research reports, and policy publications.

Ideal Background

We are particularly interested in candidates with experience in one or more of the following:

• occupational licensing;
• universal license recognition;
• professional licensing reciprocity;
• interstate worker mobility;
• migration and labor supply;
• occupational regulation;
• labor economics or applied microeconomics;
• employment and wage effects of state policy;
• professional credentialing;
• state regulatory reform;
• causal or quasi-experimental policy evaluation.

Strong methodological experience may include:

• Difference-in-Differences;
• staggered treatment designs;
• modern event-study methods;
• synthetic control;
• regression discontinuity;
• instrumental variables;
• panel-data methods;
• causal inference.

Experience working with CPS, ACS/PUMS, OEWS, QWI/LEHD, Census microdata, BLS datasets, state licensing records, or occupational crosswalks is especially relevant.

Preferred candidates will have:

• Ph.D. or advanced doctoral training in economics, public policy, sociology, statistics, political science, or a related quantitative field;
• demonstrated applied research experience;
• experience working with large longitudinal, administrative, or survey datasets;
• proficiency in R, Stata, Python, SQL, or comparable research tools;
• strong understanding of causal identification and policy evaluation;
• strong written communication and methodological judgment.

Academic affiliation is welcome but not required. WIL places greater weight on research quality, methodological fit, and demonstrated ability to execute rigorous empirical work than institutional prestige.

This is a project-based research opportunity, not a guaranteed salaried appointment.

Initial participation may include limited research-design, methodology, literature-review, or proposal-development work. Larger research engagements are expected to be contingent upon external grant or sponsored-project funding.

Depending on experience and project requirements, selected researchers may be considered for roles such as:

• Senior Research Fellow
• Methods Lead
• Co-Investigator
• Principal Investigator / Co-Principal Investigator
• Applied Labor Economist
• Research Consultant

Any funded role, scope, compensation, institutional involvement, or formal appointment would be established separately.

About Workforce Intelligence Lab

Workforce Intelligence Lab is an independent nonprofit research organization focused on improving how workforce capacity, labor-market change, hiring demand, compensation pressure, worker mobility, and workforce execution risk are measured and understood.

WIL works with researchers, academic institutions, industry experts, and data partners to produce evidence-driven research intended to support public policy, workforce planning, infrastructure development, and better labor-market decision-making.

Researcher Network

Applicants may also elect to be considered for future WIL research, grant, publication, and sponsored-project opportunities aligned with their expertise.