The activities of the Research Division are funded largely by income from the W.E. Upjohn Unemployment Trust, which is supplemented by outside grants, contracts, and publication sales. The Institute's research program is comprised of three elements:
- A resident staff of economists, ten of
whom hold Ph.D. degrees, conducts research on a wide variety of employment issues .
Senior staff economists are supported by research analysts, computer programmers,
librarians, and clerical staff. Their studies appear in Institute publications, academic
journals, and other scholarly materials.
- A competitive external grant program,
administered by the senior staff, provides financial support to researchers outside the
Institute to conduct studies that extend and complement the Institute's internal research
program. Grants are used to encourage policy-relevant research on key employment
issues. Most of the completed projects are published as
Institute books. The Institute also supports a joint public lecture and seminar
series with Western Michigan University and an annual
dissertation award for the best Ph.D. thesis on policy-relevant employment issues.
- The publications program disseminates research conducted by Institute staff, grant recipients, and other outside experts through a range of publications. Books are the Institute's main vehicle for informing researchers, practitioners, and policy makers about important research findings. Since 1980 the Institute has published over 125 different titles on a variety of topics. To provide a more frequent overview of the Institute's research, a newsletter entitled Employment Research is published four times a year. The Institute also prints staff working papers and technical reports. Business Outlook for West Michigan, a quarterly review of the local economy, features information on current economic conditions and near-term forecasts of metropolitan areas in West Michigan.