While the aggregate employment impact of private equity has been carefully examined, the quality of those
jobs remains poorly understood. Anecdotally, accounts are plentiful of private equity groups weakening
unions, reducing pension benefits, and exacerbating work conditions; but there is little systematic evidence
one way or another.
To undertake this analysis, Professors Ashwini Agrawal at the Stern School of Business at NYU and Josh
Lerner of Harvard Business School will combine the PCRI database with two other sources of information. The
first is data from Department of Labor filings about Unfair Labor Practice complaints (a formal process by
which employees can object to anti-union activity or pressure by employers) and about union elections. These
data are compiled on the individual establishment levels – i.e., the specific factories, offices, retail
outlets and other distinct physical locations where business takes place. The second source will be the
Longitudinal Business Database (LBD) at the U.S. Census Bureau, which tracks employment and earnings across
the entire nonfarm private sector and contains annual data for about five million firms and six million
establishments.
Professors Agrawal and Lerner will look at the events prior to and after private equity purchases, in order
to evaluate the impact of private equity on job quality and labor-management relations. This work will
enrich our understanding of the impact of private equity investment on the quality of work life in the
United States.
1 Steven J. Davis, John Haltiwanger, Kyle Handley, Ron Jarmin, Josh Lerner, and Javier Miranda, “Private Equity, Jobs, and Productivity,” National Bureau of Economic Research working paper no. 19458, 2013.
2 See, for example, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Behind the Buyouts: Inside the World of Private Equity, Washington: SEIU, 2013