Author Archive

Derek Thompson

Workforce

The Remote-Work Revolution Will Be Bigger Than We Think

The past year has offered a glimpse of the nowhere-everywhere future of work.

Management

Three Theories for Why You Have No Time

Better technology means higher expectations, and higher expectations create more work.

Management

Workism Is Making Americans Miserable

For the college-educated elite, work has morphed into a religious identity—promising identity, transcendence, and community, but failing to deliver.

Oversight

How the Trump Administration's Suit to Block a Media Merger Could Hurt the Tech Industry

The lawsuit may pit AT&T and Time Warner against the Justice Department. But it's Silicon Valley that might suffer the most.

Oversight

Is Donald Trump Using the Justice Department to Crush CNN?

Or is the Department of Justice finally cracking down on corporate mergers?

Management

Older Americans Are More Millennial Than Millennials

To understand both changes to the workforce and changing attitudes toward work, don’t watch young people. Watch their parents (and uncles, aunts, and grandparents).

Management

Trump's 3 a.m. Phone Call

The president pondered a reasonable economics question—but who he reportedly dialed for answers raises questions of its own.

Oversight

Why Democrats and Republicans Speak Different Languages

The Republican National Convention proved yet again that the GOP talks about America and U.S. policy with an entire unique vocabulary. It hasn’t always been this way.

Management

Report: Federal Government is Effectively Fighting Inequality

Inequality is growing. But so are government efforts to combat it—and they’re working.

Management

How to Hire the Perfect Worker

Finding great new employees is hard. A little bit of empiricism can help.

Management

The Easy 10-Second Tax Return

Letting the government do its citizens’ taxes is cheap, efficient, and accurate. Naturally, the United States won’t do it.

Oversight

How Donald Trump Can Beat Hillary Clinton

He spent years as a moderate. He spent years as a nationalist. Why can’t he spend six months being a moderate nationalist?

Management

'From Atoms to Bits': A Brilliant Visual History of American Ideas

A new paper employs a simple technique—counting words in patent texts—to trace the history of American invention, from chemistry to computers.

Management

The Typical Millennial Is $2,000 Poorer Than His Parents at This Age

More young people are living in poverty and fewer have jobs compared their parents' generation, the Baby Boomers, in 1980.

Management

The Incredible Shrinking Incomes of Young Americans

You can't explain millennial economic behavior without explaining that wages have collapsed.

Management

The Gender-Wage Gap Is Shrinking—or Is It?

Why Millennial women will make more than their mothers, but less than their brothers.

Management

Quit Your Job

The surprising benefits of taking your 20s to use the labor market as a laboratory, rather than commit to the first company that happens to hire you