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David Autor is the Daniel (1972) and Gail Rubinfeld Professor in the MIT Department of Economics. He earned a B.A. in Psychology from Tufts University and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1999. Autor’s research examines the labor-market impacts of technological change and globalization, including effects on job polarization, skill demands, earnings levels and inequality, and electoral outcomes. He serves as codirector of the NBER Labor Studies Program and the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work, and he is a Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow at MIT.
Autor has received numerous honors, including the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, the Sherwin Rosen Prize for outstanding contributions to labor economics, the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, the Heinz 25th Special Recognition Award, the NOMIS Distinguished Scientist and Scholar Award in 2023, and selection as an AI2050 Senior Fellow in 2024. Key publications include “The Skill Content of Recent Technological Change: An Empirical Exploration” (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2003), “The China Syndrome: Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States” (American Economic Review, 2013), and “Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation” (Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2015). He is an elected Fellow of the Econometric Society, the Society of Labor Economists, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
MIT economists Daron Acemoglu, David Autor, and Simon Johnson unveil a pro-worker AI framework in their February 2026 NBER paper, urging policies to prioritize human-augmenting technologies over automation to boost jobs, wages, and equality.
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