John Locher/AP Photo
Economist, educator, and Prospect board member William Spriggs at the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium, August 2014
Our friend and colleague Bill Spriggs died early this week, much too young at age 68. Bill, a Prospect board member and occasional contributor of articles to our magazine, was one of the great economists of his generation.
Bill had a number of positions in government, including as assistant secretary of labor under President Obama, and as chief economist of the AFL-CIO. But he felt that his most important lifetime accomplishment was his role as a teacher and mentor to aspiring Black economists. He served as the longtime chair of the economics department at Howard University; and no matter what other positions he took, Bill kept his professorship there so that he could continue that calling.
Larry Mishel, who was a colleague of Bill’s when both worked at the Economic Policy Institute, was a friend since they were in graduate school together at Madison beginning in the late 1970s. Bill was the only Black student in their entering cohort. Larry has written:
He also stood out because of his mission. He wanted to become the best economist he could and then use those skills to advance Black people and to become a professor at an HBCU.
Other students saw economics training as a time to gather “tools” for future work (as if they were engineers) or to be replicas of some specific professor. Not Bill. He wrote his dissertation (getting an award from NEA!) on Black wealth accumulation in Virginia, research which required him to visit county courthouses to collect data. There were easier topics and research paths, but Bill did not follow them.
Bill later worked for the Joint Economic Committee, and for both the Clinton and Obama administrations. He was on the short list of possible appointees to the Fed Board of Governors. He was past president of the National Economic Association and is the current president-elect of the Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA).
Bill’s research topics included the multiple impacts of occupational and residential segregation, monetary policy and the Fed, labor policy and income distribution, trade, Social Security and social insurance, and how all of these issues interacted. He always had outside-the-box ideas for remedies and political coalitions to bring them about. He was a superb technical economist as well as a political economist in the best sense.
But the thing that made Bill Spriggs most special, from my experience, was his personal sweetness and generosity blended with political toughness and commitment. Valerie Wilson, who directs EPI’s much acclaimed Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy, has written:
I owe my career as an economist to my friend and mentor, Bill Spriggs. Not only did he convince me to finish graduate school, but when Bill hired me for my first job as a research analyst at the National Urban League, he would often tell me that I was his retirement policy.
Bill gave meaning to those words by selflessly giving his time, incredible intellect, wisdom, and personal connections while advocating for me on numerous occasions. I learned so much of what I know about economics and economic policy from Bill Spriggs, but more than that, I learned to lead with principles and purpose.
President Biden put it well when he said:
Bill was a towering figure in his field, a trailblazer who challenged the field’s basic assumptions about racial discrimination in labor markets, pay equity, and worker empowerment. His work inspired countless economists, some of whom work for our Administration, to join him in the pursuit of economic justice … Along with these remarkable contributions and achievements, Bill will be missed for his kindness, warmth, and humility.
Few people can be described as irreplaceable. Bill Spriggs was one.
