Jessica Hendren Schwalb has already started her career. As she prepares to cross the stage at Convocation Hall, the new Woodsworth College graduand is working with the United Way for Southeastern Michigan. The focus of her work is articulating policies and programs that are helping low-income people achieve economic mobility. It’s a position that her double major in in Economics with a Focus on Data Analytics and Peace, Conflict and Justice Studies has well-prepared her to do.

“My classes have been giving me a good sense of how to speak the language of economics in advocacy work. I remember in ECO202, writing a policy brief and the feeling that it was a tool that gave me a chance to turn the economic conclusions we’d arrived at in class into policy,” she said. “I also took labour economics last year and ended up diving into the minimum wage literature. A lot of people conclude that if you raise the min wage, you have less employment overall, but you also see increased spending power. It’s a good example of how you can have different models that need to be stress tested in the real world.” [Read more…]