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Henry E. Siu

From EverybodyWiki Bios & Wiki


  • Comment: All statements should be accompanied by citations. Please remove the external inks from the body of the article. ArthurTheGardener (talk) 15:48, 25 July 2026 (UTC)


Henry E. Siu
Born1975 (1975)
🏳️ NationalityCanadian
💼 Occupation
Economist
Known forAutomation and labour markets
🌐 Websitehenrysiu.com

Henry E. Siu is a Canadian economist and Professor in the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia (UBC). He is a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). His research spans macroeconomics and labour economics, with particular focus on automation and the labour market, job polarization, jobless recoveries, and unemployment dynamics.

Education

Siu received his BA (Honours) in Economics from the University of British Columbia and his PhD in Economics from Northwestern University.

Career

Siu joined the Vancouver School of Economics at UBC, where he holds the rank of Professor and serves as Academic Director of the Centre for Innovative Data in Economics Research (CIDER). He has served as a visiting scholar or consultant with the Federal Reserve Banks of Chicago, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and St. Louis, the Reserve Bank of Australia, and the Bank of Canada.[1]

He is a member of the Canadian Macroeconomics Study Group (CMSG) Secretariat and a member of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Economics Association.

Research

Siu's research programme spans the macroeconomics of the labour market, with particular emphasis on how technological change shapes employment, unemployment, and the distribution of work across the wage spectrum and over workers' lifetimes.

Automation, Job Polarization, and Jobless Recoveries

Siu's most widely cited work, conducted primarily with Nir Jaimovich (University of California San Diego), examines the role of routine-biased technological change in reshaping employment across the wage spectrum. Their paper "Job Polarization and Jobless Recoveries" (Review of Economics and Statistics, 2020) changed how economists understand recessions: rather than temporary disruptions followed by recovery, recessions are moments of permanent structural transformation, in which firms replace routine middle-skill jobs with automation technology.[2] The paper demonstrates that job polarization is not a gradual process: essentially all employment loss in routine occupations occurs during economic downturns. As Siu summarised: "We think of recessions as temporary, but they lead to these permanent changes."[3]

The research attracted significant attention from economists, policymakers, and the broader public. Chrystia Freeland, global editor-at-large at Reuters and later Canada's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, wrote about the paper in the New York Times,[4] reflecting her longstanding focus on economic inequality and the erosion of the middle class. Further coverage appeared in The Atlantic,[5] Bloomberg,[6] and The Globe and Mail.[7] Senior Federal Reserve officials engaged with the findings directly: David Altig, Research Director at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, called the post-2008 labour market "the mother of all jobless recoveries" in connection with the paper's conclusions.[8][9] The research was further summarised in the St. Louis Fed's Regional Economist[10] and the Dallas Fed's Economic Letter.[11]

Siu and Jaimovich were commissioned by Third Way (United States) to write a policy-oriented treatment of the jobless recoveries research.[12] The resulting report generated coverage in The Atlantic,[13] MIT Technology Review,[14] and the Wall Street Journal, a BBC World Update radio segment, and an NPR AirTalk interview. Siu and Jaimovich separately contributed a paper on automation and the middle class to the Brookings Institution Future of the Middle Class Initiative.[15]

Their research programme further includes "Disappearing Routine Jobs: Who, How, and Why?" (Journal of Monetary Economics, 2017, with Guido Matias Cortes and Nir Jaimovich) and "The Dynamics of Disappearing Routine Jobs: A Flows Approach" (Labour Economics, 2020, with Cortes, Jaimovich, and Christopher Nekarda). The macroeconomics of automation is developed further in "The Macroeconomics of Automation: Data, Theory, and Policy Analysis" (Journal of Monetary Economics, 2021, with Jaimovich, Itay Saporta-Eksten, and Yaniv Yedid-Levi).

In 2016, Siu served as a plenary panelist at the symposium, The Social and Economic Implications of Artificial Intelligence Technologies in the Near-Term, co-hosted by the Obama White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Economic Council, and NYU's Information Law Institute.[16][17] The symposium gathered 100 leading experts and was part of the White House's Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence initiative, and Siu's research was cited in the AI Now 2016 Primers distributed to all expert workshop attendees.[18] Siu appeared on the plenary panel alongside Alondra Nelson (Columbia University, later Acting Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy), Mustafa Suleyman (co-founder of Google DeepMind, later CEO of Microsoft AI), Latanya Sweeney (Harvard University), and Lucy Suchman (Lancaster University). The event directly preceded the founding of the AI Now Institute.

Unemployment Dynamics, Demographics, and Occupations

Siu's research also examines the dynamics of unemployment, who bears unemployment risk and at what stage of their career, and how demographic composition and life-cycle dynamics shape aggregate labour market outcomes. "The Young, the Old, and the Restless: Demographics and Business Cycle Volatility" (American Economic Review, 2009, with Nir Jaimovich) finds that the age composition of the workforce is a significant determinant of business cycle severity contributing to the Great Moderation at the turn of the 21st Century, with younger workers contributing disproportionately to business cycle fluctuations.

"What Should I Be When I Grow Up? Occupations and Unemployment over the Life-Cycle" (Journal of Monetary Economics, 2016, with Martin Gervais, Nir Jaimovich, and Yaniv Yedid-Levi) examines how young workers search across occupations early in their careers, generating the elevated job mobility and unemployment rates characteristic of youth labour markets. The paper attracted media coverage from The New York Times,[19] The Atlantic,[20] and FiveThirtyEight.[21]

"The Growing Importance of Social Tasks in High-Paying Occupations: Implications for Sorting" (Journal of Human Resources, 2023, with Guido Matias Cortes and Nir Jaimovich) documents the increasing weight of interpersonal and social skills in high-wage occupations and how this has contributed to the increasing representation of women in top-paying jobs.[22]

COVID-19 and Labour Markets

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Siu co-led the development of the VSE COVID Risk/Reward Assessment Tool, built by a team drawn from UBC's Vancouver School of Economics, HEC Montréal, UQAM, Dalhousie University, and Analysis Group. The tool assessed the risks and benefits of reopening more than 300 occupations across over 100 industries, combining job-level characteristics — physical proximity to others, frequency of personal contact, exposure to disease, and outdoor work — with worker-level characteristics such as commuting by public transit, living in a crowded dwelling, and living with a healthcare worker.[23] This dual focus was developed in consultation with experts at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control and the Institut national de santé publique du Québec, and validated using a decade of influenza surveillance data.

Upon its release in May 2020, the tool was shared with the B.C. government and public health officials and communicated directly to senior public health leadership at both provincial and federal levels.[24][25] The C.D. Howe Institute published a co-authored intelligence memo by Green, Simard-Duplain, and Siu arguing the tool could serve as a common knowledge base for evidence-based economic reopening strategies.[26] The Labour Market Information Council provided financial support for its national rollout.[27] The tool was subsequently adopted by Statistics Canada, which published a peer-reviewed article in Economic and Social Reports (April 2021) making an updated version available through custom tabulations, recognizing its role in national evidence-based policy infrastructure.[28]

Associated research was published as "The Distribution of COVID-19 Related Risks" (Canadian Journal of Economics, 2022, with Patrick Baylis and colleagues), documenting that women were more concentrated in high viral-risk occupations, accounting for their greater employment losses during the pandemic, and that low-educated workers faced substantially higher employment losses due to their lower ability to work from home.[29]

Early Work in Monetary and Fiscal Policy

Siu's earliest published research examined questions in monetary economics and fiscal policy, including "Optimal Fiscal and Monetary Policy with Sticky Prices" (Journal of Monetary Economics, 2004), "State Dependent Pricing and Business Cycle Asymmetries" (International Economic Review, 2007, with Michael B. Devereux), "Time Consistent Monetary Policy with Endogenous Price Rigidity" (Journal of Economic Theory, 2008), and "The Fiscal Role of Conscription in the U.S. World War II Effort" (Journal of Monetary Economics, 2008).

Honours and Awards

External Links

References

  1. ↑ "Henry Siu". Vancouver School of Economics. Retrieved 2026-06-07.
  2. ↑ Jaimovich, Nir; Siu, Henry E. (2020). "Job Polarization and Jobless Recoveries". Review of Economics and Statistics. 102 (1): 129–147. doi:10.1162/rest_a_00875.
  3. ↑ Freeland, Chrystia (2012-04-12). "Jobless Recovery Leaves Middle Class Behind". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2026-06-07.
  4. ↑ Freeland, Chrystia (2012-04-12). "Jobless Recovery Leaves Middle Class Behind". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2026-06-07.
  5. ↑ Crook, Clive (2012-04-10). "Job Polarization and Jobless Recoveries". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2026-06-07.
  6. ↑ "Mid-Incomers Suffer in Polarized U.S. Job Market: Economy". Bloomberg.com. Archived from the original on 2021-09-14. Retrieved 2026-06-07.
  7. ↑ "The continuing decline of the 'middle-skill' worker". The Globe and Mail. 2013-06-03. Retrieved 2026-06-07.
  8. ↑ Crook, Clive (2012-04-10). "Job Polarization and Jobless Recoveries". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2026-06-07.
  9. ↑ Freeland, Chrystia (2012-04-12). "Jobless Recovery Leaves Middle Class Behind". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2026-06-07.
  10. ↑ "Job Polarization Leaves Middle-Skilled Workers Out in the Cold". Regional Economist. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. January 2013.
  11. ↑ Cheremukhin, A. (Anton) (2014-05-01). "Middle-Skill Jobs Lost in U.S. Labor Market Polarization". Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Economic Letter. 9 (5).
  12. ↑ Jaimovich, Nir; Siu, Henry E. (April 2015). "Jobless Recoveries". Third Way.
  13. ↑ Thompson, Derek (July 2015). "A World Without Work". The Atlantic.
  14. ↑ "Who Will Own the Robots?". MIT Technology Review. 2015.
  15. ↑ Jaimovich, Nir; Siu, Henry E. (2019). "How Automation and Other Forms of IT Affect the Middle Class: Assessing the Evidence". Brookings Institution, Future of the Middle Class Initiative.
  16. ↑ "Plenary Panel: Inequality, Labor, Health and Ethics in AI + Audience Q&A". AI Now Institute. 25 July 2016 – via YouTube. Participants: Alondra Nelson (Columbia University), Mustafa Suleyman (Google DeepMind), Latanya Sweeney (Harvard University), Henry Siu (University of British Columbia), Lucy Suchman (Lancaster University)
  17. ↑ The AI Now Report: The Social and Economic Implications of Artificial Intelligence Technologies in the Near-Term (PDF) (Report). AI Now Institute / NYU Information Law Institute / Obama White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. September 2016.
  18. ↑ AI Now 2016 Primers (PDF) (Report). AI Now Institute. July 2016.
  19. ↑ Selingo, Jeffrey J. (2016-04-05). "Will You Sprint, Stroll or Stumble Into a Career?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2026-06-07.
  20. ↑ Casselman, Ben (November 2014). "Quit Your Job". The Atlantic.
  21. ↑ "What Should I Be When I Grow Up?". FiveThirtyEight. 2014.
  22. ↑ Weber, Lauren (2017-03-21). "As Skills Shift for High-Paying Jobs, Women See Advantages". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2026-06-08.
  23. ↑ "VSE COVID-19 Risk/Reward Assessment Tool | VSE COVID-19 Research Program". covid19.economics.ubc.ca. Retrieved 2026-06-07.
  24. ↑ "UBC Economists Create Tool to Measure COVID-19 Risk in B.C. Jobs". UBC News. 19 May 2020.
  25. ↑ "UBC team develop tool to gauge risks to reopening sectors". The Globe and Mail. 2020-05-19. Retrieved 2026-06-07.
  26. ↑ Green, David A.; Simard-Duplain, Gaëlle; Siu, Henry E. (2 June 2020). "A COVID Assessment Tool to Guide the Opening and Closing of Sectors". C.D. Howe Institute.
  27. ↑ "VSE COVID-19 Risk/Reward Assessment Tool". Labour Market Information Council. 14 May 2020.
  28. ↑ Yang, Zhe; Bonikowska, Aneta; Frenette, Marc (28 April 2021). "An Occupational Risk/Reward Assessment Tool for COVID-19" (PDF). Economic and Social Reports. Statistics Canada. 1 (4).
  29. ↑ Baylis, Patrick; et al. (2022). "The Distribution of COVID-19 Related Risks". Canadian Journal of Economics. 55 (1): 172–213. doi:10.3386/w27881. PMC 8653230 Check |pmc= value (help). PMID 34898684 Check |pmid= value (help).
  30. ↑ "Bank of Canada Announces First Recipient of Governor's Award". www.bankofcanada.ca. Retrieved 2026-06-07.


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