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Katharine G Abraham is the Director of the Maryland Center for Economics and Policy, and a professor of Survey Methodology and Economics at University of Maryland. She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate for two terms as Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics from 1993-2001 and again confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve a term as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers from 2011-2013.

She holds a B.S. in Economics from Iowa State University and a PhD in Economics from Harvard University. She is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and is the recipient of an honorary doctorate by Iowa State University. She has been awarded the Julius Shiskin Award for Economic Statistics (2002), the Roger Herriot Award for Innovation in Federal Statistics (2010), and the Susan C. Eaton Scholar-Practitioner Award of the Labor and Employment Relations Association (2013). She is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and the Society of Labor Economists. During her time as Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, she laid the groundwork for American Time Use Survey, the first U.S. Government survey of time use, and she established the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee. During public debate on the Consumer Price Index, Dr. Abraham testified repeatedly before Congress on the shortcomings of existing methodology and the necessity of making revisions based on objective research. She expanded coverage of the prices of services in the Producer Price Index; instituted improvements in the Current Employment Statistics, including the substitution of a probability sample for the quota sample; accelerated delivery of employment and wage statistics; and took steps toward expanding coverage of wages and salaries in the Occupational Employment Statistics program.

Her research has included studies of the effects of job duration on wages; the effects of advertising on job vacancies, wages and the business cycle; and comparisons among the U.S., European, and Japanese labor markets; work-sharing policies, unemployment, and job openings; the operation of internal labor markets; the effects of financial aid on the decision to attend college; the work and retirement decisions of older Americans; and the measurement of market and nonmarket economic activity.

She is married and has two grown sons.