Summary

This research project, led by IRLE director Chris Tilly, looks at variations and change in retail job quality in the US in the context of global comparisons with Mexico and several European countries, including Denmark, France, Germany and the Netherlands. The project, supported by funds from the Ford, Rockefeller, and Russell Sage Foundations, the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, a UCLA Faculty Senate grant, and the Fulbright Scholar Program includes fieldwork in both Mexico and the United States. Recent publications from this project touch on hours of work in retail in Canada, Mexico, and the US, comparison of US and Mexican retail jobs, and contrasting high pay in French retail jobs with low pay in US ones (which won the Best Article of 2012 award from Work, Employment, and Society), and examining worker mobility in formal and informal retail jobs in Mexico. Carré and Tilly are working on a monograph, tentatively titled Working in Retail Around the World, which is projected to be completed in 2015.