Urban Labor Markets and Employment Policy
This MIT Sloan School of Management course examines how labor markets function within cities, starting from broad trends in employment and wages before narrowing to the mechanics of urban hiring, layoffs, and mobility. Lectures and readings cover public and private job training programs, unemployment insurance and other labor market interventions, and how these policies connect to local economic development strategies. A recurring theme is the internal organization of work within firms: how jobs are structured, how promotion ladders form, and how firm-level practices shape wages and turnover. The course draws on labor economics and industrial relations research to compare how markets allocate workers against how firms actually manage them internally. Materials are published through MIT OpenCourseWare and include the syllabus, readings list, and assignments used in the original course, free to access with no certificate offered. It suits students interested in labor economics, urban policy, or human resource management who want the academic grounding behind workforce policy debates.