Ryan Michaels

Ryan Michaels studies the macroeconomics of labor markets. Recent research of his examines the sources of changes in unemployment and wages over the business cycle and the causes of the long-run decline in men’s labor force participation. He found that declines in working time can imply substantial reductions in household well-being. He aims to answer such questions as why these declines occur and persist and what can be done about them, if anything. Economic Insights published a summary of this work in 2017. His working paper published in 2017 explores the aggregate effects of labor market frictions.

In 2014, his paper “Marginal Jobs, Heterogeneous Firms, and Unemployment Flows,” published in the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, won the Best Paper Award, from the American Economics Association.

Ryan joined the Reserve Bank in 2015 as a senior economist. He earned his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan and a B.S. in international relations from Georgetown University.