Chris Tilly studies labor markets, inequality, urban development, and public policies directed toward better jobs.

He is particularly interested in understanding how combinations of institutions and markets generate unequal labor outcomes, and in how public policy and collective action can successfully be directed toward improving and equalizing such outcomes. Within this framework, Professor Tilly has examined part-time and contingent work, gender and racial disparities, job mobility, and other issues.

While continuing to conduct research on workplace issues in the United States, Professor Tilly has increasingly undertaken comparative research on countries including Brazil, China, India, Korea, Mexico, and South Africa, along with several European countries.  His areas of greatest expertise are the United States, Mexico, and Latin America.

In addition to conducting scholarly research, he served for 20 years (1986-2006) as a coeditor of Dollars and Sense, a popular economics magazine, and frequently conducts research for advocacy groups, community organizations, and labor unions. He served on the Program Committee and later the Board of Directors of Grassroots International from 1991-2003, ending that time as the Chair of the Board.

Before becoming an academic, he spent eight years doing community and labor organizing.

PAPERS AND PUBLICATIONS

• Experiments in power-building: An intellectual history and comparative framework for informal worker organizing — Rina Agarwala and Chris Tilly, 2025
• Informal work: definitions, drivers, agency — Chris Tilly, 2025
• Three windows on decent work: theories of labour relations — Chris Tilly, 2024
• Organizing Informal Workers Globally: Comparing a Global Union Federation and a Global Informal Worker Organization Network — Chris Tilly, 2023
• Informality in action: A relational look at informal work — Byoung-Hoon Lee, Sarah Swider, Chris Tilly, 2020
• Digital Technology Implementation i US Retail Stores: Trends, Potentials and Contingencies — Françoise Carré and Chris Tilly, 2020
• Retail Jobs: What Pathways for Improvement? — Françoise Carré and Chris Tilly, 2020
• Field Education and Community-Based Planning in a Worst-Case Scenario — Marie Kennedy and Chris Tilly, 2019
• Intersectional Histories, Overdetermined Fortunes: Understanding Mexican and US omestic Worker Movements — Chris Tilly, Georgina Rojas-García and Nik Theodore, 2018
• Governance Lessons from Urban Informality — Hugo Sarmiento and Chris Tilly, 2018
• Precarious labor, South and North: An introduction – Sarah Mosoetsa, Joel Stillerman, and Chris Tilly, International Labor and Working Class History, 2016
• The unexpected power of informal workers in the public square: A comparison of Mexican and US organizing models – Hugo Sarmiento et al, International Labor and Working Class History, 2016
• The Future of Work: Escaping the Current Dystopian Trajectory and Building Better Alternatives — Peter Evans and Chris Tilly,  2015
• Marx, Polanyi, and … informal workers?  Toward a new social contract for workers – Rina Agarwala and Chris Tilly, “The Futures We Want” blog, 2015
• Precarious Work in Construction in Guatemala and Costa Rica – Minor Mora Salas, Hugo Sarmiento, and Chris Tilly, Report to AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, 2015
• Los trabajadores que se organizan en la plaza: Contra-movimiento de una fuente inesperada – Chris Tilly et al, Economía Crítica, 2014
• International informal worker organizations – Françoise Carré, Chris Tilly, and Chris Bonner, Perspectives on Work, 2014
• A Conceptual Framework on Informal Work and Informal Worker Organizing – Manuel Rosaldo, Chris Tilly, and Peter Evans, 2012
• Informal Worker Organizing as a Strategy for Improving Subcontracted Work in the Textile and Apparel Industries of Brazil, South Africa, India and China – Chris Tilly et al, Report to the US Department of Labor, 2012