President's Letter
October 2010
On behalf of the Board of Trustees of the W.E. Upjohn Unemployment Corporation and the staff of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, let me welcome you to the Institutes new website. We have spent the past year converting all of our research documents and publications into easily-retrievable electronic files, reorganizing research categories, and redesigning web pages. The result is a new look on the web, and we hope a site that will better serve your needs in finding research on important policy issues related to employment and economic development.
While the website is new, the mission of the Institute remains the same. Since our founding in 1932, we have been dedicated to researching the causes and effects of unemployment and to study the feasibility of measures to insure against it. This was the concern of our founder, Dr. W.E. Upjohn, as he witnessed long lines of unemployed during the Great Depression, and this is still, unfortunately, the focus today as the U.S. and world economies struggle to get back on their feet.
In conformity with its charter, the Institute operates as a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization devoting its resources to finding and promoting solutions to employment-related issues at the regional, state, national, and international levels. The broad objectives of the Institutes research and grant programs are to:
- link scholarship, evaluation, and experimentation with issues of public and private employment and unemployment policy;
- bring new knowledge to the attention of policymakers and decision makers; and
- make knowledge and scholarship relevant and useful in their applications to the solutions of employment and unemployment problems.
I invite you to carefully examine our website, and you will see that the Upjohn Institute maintains an active research program focusing on both labor demand and labor supply issues. Our research covers: Education & Training; Employment & Compensation; Global Issues; Regional Issues; Unemployment, Disability, & Poverty; and Workforce Development. Each area of research is approached in an integrated manner, with a combination of internal research, funded research, grants for external research, and publications of research monographs.
While the major support for Institute research and publication programs comes from our endowment, the Institute also engages in selected contract research work that is central to our mission and is in the public interest.
In addition to the research focus, the Upjohn Institute includes the Employment Management Services Division (EMSD). This operating unit is the administrative entity for the Kalamazoo-St. Joseph Workforce Investment Area, which manages the federal and state workforce development services for Kalamazoo and Saint Joseph counties in Southwest Michigan.
The Institute maintains an environment that is highly conducive to policy-oriented research. Because of its endowment, we enjoy a level of independence that gives our work an extra level of objectivity. In addition, the usual research support functions are readily available at the Institute, consisting of computer resources, library resources, research support personnel, and a lively and stimulating intellectual environment. Most of what is produced here is now available to you on the web.
Again, I welcome you to the site.
Randall W. Eberts, President
W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research