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Noah Zucker

@noahzucker.com
1.5K followers 443 following 20 posts

Assistant professor at Princeton • PhD Columbia • political economy, climate change • www.noahzucker.com

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Noah Zucker @noahzucker.com · 23/09/2026
Men across classes see such labor market transformations as indicative of costly cultural upheaval. Working-class women, while more economically autonomous, see the new arrangement as a rotten deal—working more but often earning less than what their husbands once did.
Reasons for moves to the right following layoffs of low-skilled men, plus shifts in workforce composition towards women:

Low-skilled men: status concerns + scarcity concerns
Low-skilled women: scarcity concerns
High-skilled men: status concerns
High-skilled women: no concerns
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Noah Zucker @noahzucker.com · 23/09/2026
When working-class men lose work, women often take on more paid labor to compensate for losses of household income. In the U.S., coal mining towns have seen dramatic growth in female labor force participation as mines have shuttered: www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/u...
Coal miners in Colorado.
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Noah Zucker @noahzucker.com · 23/09/2026
🚨 Workforces exposed to globalization and decarbonization are often overwhelmingly male. New article at @ajpseditor.bsky.social with @rickyclark.bsky.social and @rkhoban.bsky.social asks how layoffs of these men shape voting: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
AJPS article: "Breadwinner Backlash." Abstract: Low-skilled men have long been vulnerable to globalization, decarbonization, and other forms of economic disruption. When shocks are realized, women often increase their paid labor to compensate for men's loss of income. We study how layoffs of low-skilled men and concurrent shifts in workforce composition toward women affect voting. We theorize that this labor market rebalancing produces “nostalgic” coalitions of men and women that seek a return to male-breadwinner family models. Such attitudes fuel right-wing movements that pledge to protect conservative gender roles. Evidence from local labor markets and voting in the United States over the last two decades, as well as a longitudinal study tracking individual Americans over several decades, support this theory. These findings contribute a new gender-based account of the globalization backlash.
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Noah Zucker @noahzucker.com · 10/12/2024
3. How can governments compensate for lost expertise? Outsource! With rich procurement data, we show that private sector demand is a strong predictor of EPA demand for (environmental) consulting services. We illustrate a "de facto privatization" of climate governance.
Plot showing that rate of EPA procurement of consultants has grown faster than that for other agencies, mirroring growth in private sector demand for climate expertise.
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Noah Zucker @noahzucker.com · 10/12/2024
Using data on the near universe of U.S. online job postings, we document two stark trends: 1. Private sector demand for skilled climate experts is way up over the last few years. 2. The private sector wage premium for climate experts has rapidly grown.
Left plot shows dramatic growth in firm job postings targeting climate experts over last 4 years or so. Right plot shows that private sector wage premium for climate experts has rapidly grown and converged with the premium apparent in other areas (~20%).
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Noah Zucker @noahzucker.com · 10/12/2024
🚨 New working paper with @calvin-thrall.bsky.social + Simran Singh 🚨 Private sector demand for climate expertise is skyrocketing. Firms now compete with the government to hire top climate experts. How does this competition affect the state's capacity for climate governance? doi.org/10.31219/osf...
Title: Greener Pastures? A Labor Market Theory of Climate Governance

By: Simran Singh, Calvin Thrall, and Noah Zucker

Abstract: Climate governance requires access to climate experts: individuals with specialized knowledge of decarbonization and climate science. Here we model climate governance as the function of a competition between the state and private sector for a scarce pool of climate experts. Governments seek experts to develop and implement climate policies. Firms seek experts to affect policy choice, skirt enforcement, and measure climate risks to commercial interests. As firm interest in climate grows, the government’s ability to attract experts declines, making it more reliant on the private sector for climate governance. To support this argument, we measure private sector demand for experts with unique data on U.S. job postings, paired with administrative data on government bureaucrats and procurement. Our findings offer a novel labor-based account of climate politics, contributing to the study of labor markets in political science, the sources of bureaucratic expertise, and the net effects of corporate social responsibility.
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Noah Zucker @noahzucker.com · 03/02/2024
I'm on the committee for this year's APSA Virginia Walsh Dissertation Award. Please send in nominations of excellent science/tech/environmental politics dissertations (including your own!) by March 1st!
Email nominations to Elizabeth Shanahan (Montana State), Noah Zucker (LSE), Matto Mildenberger (UC Santa Barbara)
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Noah Zucker @noahzucker.com · 09/10/2023
Such a great choice:
Nobel Prize in economics awarded to Claudia Goldin.
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Noah Zucker @noahzucker.com · 07/09/2023
🚨 I highly recommend this workshop for anyone working on IR and race. Submit your abstract here by January 22nd! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Call for proposals for Workshop on Race and International Relations at the University of Notre Dame.
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