During her time as commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Abraham laid the groundwork for the
American Time Use Survey, the first U.S. government survey of time use, and established the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee. During extensive public debate on the
Consumer Price Index in the 1990s, Abraham testified repeatedly before Congress on the shortcomings of existing methodology and the necessity of making revisions based on objective research.[9][10][11] She expanded coverage of the prices of services in the
Producer Price Index; instituted improvements in the Current Employment Statistics, including the substitution of a probability sample for the quota sample; accelerated delivery of employment and wage statistics; and took steps toward expanding coverage of wages and salaries in the
Occupational Employment Statistics program.[2]
Abraham's research has included studies of the effects of job duration on wages; the effects of advertising on job vacancies, wages and the business cycle; and comparisons among the U.S., European, and Japanese labor markets; work-sharing policies, unemployment, and job openings; the operation of internal labor markets; and the measurement of market and nonmarket economic activity.[12][13]
Awards
She is a research associate of the
National Bureau of Economic Research[14] and the recipient of an honorary doctorate by Iowa State University. She has been awarded the Julius Shiskin Award for Economic Statistics (2002),[2] the Roger Herriot Award for Innovation in Federal Statistics (2010), the Susan C. Eaton Scholar-Practitioner Award of the
Labor and Employment Relations Association (2013), and was named a Distinguished Fellow of the
American Economic Association in 2020.[15] She is a fellow of the
American Statistical Association and the Society of Labor Economists.[4] She was elected to fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020.[16]
Abraham, Katharine G.; Spletzer, James R.; Harper, Michael J. (2010). Labor in the new economy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
ISBN9780226001432.
Abraham, Katharine G.; Maitland, Aaron; Bianchi, Suzanne M. (2006). "Nonresponse in the American time use survey: who is missing from the data and how much does it matter?". Public Opinion Quarterly. 70 (5): 676–703.
doi:
10.1093/poq/nfl037.
S2CID145566407.
Abraham, Katharine G.; Spletzer, James R. (May 2009). "New evidence on the returns to job skills". The American Economic Review. 99 (2): 52–57.
doi:
10.1257/aer.99.2.52.
JSTOR25592374.
Abraham, Katharine G.;
Houseman, Susan N. (October 2014). "Short-time compensation as a tool to mitigate job loss? Evidence on the U.S. experience during the recent recession". Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society. 53 (4): 543–567.
doi:
10.1111/irel.12069.
hdl:10419/64398.
SSRN2048540.
Pdf.