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Built for the future of work
80 years of pioneering research, education, and real-world impact.
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Our flexible, interdisciplinary major lets students pursue a wide range of academic interests and careers.
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Graduate Programs
Study the workplace comprehensively with the world’s highest concentration of workplace faculty.
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Professional Education
Invest in your career by learning from instructors who blend world-leading research with business-tested practicality.
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ILR, Unions Offer NYC Construction Workers Innovative Emotional First Aid
New York State Public Impact
The ILR School’s Worker Institute and unions have launched an innovative peer support initiative to destigmatize mental health and reduce
suicide in New York City’s construction industry.
Research by EMHRM Faculty Shapes Future of HR
Earning a master’s degree from ILR means learning from and collaborating with f
aculty members who are respected worldwide as thought leaders in human resources, work, labor and employment issues.
Our graduates become Cornell alumni, granting them access to Cornell's extensive network. Learn the skills that directly translate to strategic leadership capability and business impact.
EMHRM
is designed for seasoned HR executives, while the
MILR degree
is geared toward recent undergraduates, career changers and young HR professionals.
How Internal Mobility Really Works: Insights from Cornell ILR’s JR Keller
How Internal Mobility Really Works: Insights from Cornell ILR’s JR Keller
Missing Identity Options on Forms Can Prompt Anger, Reduce Belonging
Missing Identity Options on Forms Can Prompt Anger, Reduce Belonging
Like WFH? Depends How You Got There, and Who’s Doing It
Like WFH? Depends How You Got There, and Who’s Doing It
ILR School Events
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Legalized Inequalities: Immigration and Race in the Low-Wage Workplace
Fri, Apr 24
Join us for Legalized Inequalities: Immigration and Race in the Low-Wage Workplace, a Union Days book talk and panel discussion on low-wage work, inequality and the policies shaping today’s labor landscape.

Beyond unlivable wages and limited upward mobility, low-wage work in the United States often includes unsafe conditions and degrading treatment. Immigrants and people of color are overrepresented in these roles, and often feel as though they are unable to change their working conditions.

Drawing on interviews with more than 300 low-wage Haitian and Central American workers and advocates, the authors reveal how U.S. policies produce and sustain job instability and insecurity. They argue that reforming labor and employment law, immigration law and civil rights law is essential to reshaping the low-wage workplace.

Hear from the authors:

Kate L. Griffith, Jean McKelvey-Alice Grant Professor, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Diversity, and Faculty Development, Cornell ILR School
Shannon Gleeson, Edmund Ezra Day Professor, Chairperson of the Department of Global Labor and Work, Cornell ILR School
Patricia Campos-Medina, Executive Director of the Worker Institute, Cornell ILR School
Darlène Dubuisson, Assistant Professor of Caribbean Studies, University of California, Berkeley

This event is geared toward an in-person audience, so we strongly prefer you join us on our Ithaca campus. If this is not possible, please register to join us on Zoom.

Part of the ILR School's 2026 Union Days.
Apr
24
Legalized Inequalities: Immigration and Race in the Low-Wage Workplace
Frontiers of Discovery Lecture Series with Dr. Jefferson Cowie
Fri, Apr 24
The Frontiers of Discovery Lecture Series brings influential researchers and innovators to Cornell to share the ideas and discoveries shaping the future of science and scholarship. By connecting students with leading experts, the series aims to inspire curiosity, interdisciplinary thinking, and meaningful dialogue across the Cornell community.

This event will feature Dr. Jefferson Cowie, the John L. Seigenthaler Chair of History at Vanderbilt University and recipient of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for History. A leading voice in modern American social and political history, Cowie's work examines how class, race, and labor have shaped the nation's political culture and evolving definitions of freedom.

During this special lecture, Dr.Cowie will discuss his Pulitzer Prize–winning book, Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power, which traces generations of local resistance to federal authority and interrogates a powerful and often contested vision of American freedom. Drawing on his broader scholarship—including influential works such as The Great Exception and Stayin' Alive—he will offer insights into the historical forces that continue to shape political life in the United States today.

The program will include opening remarks from the event organizers, followed by the keynote lecture and a moderated Q&A session, during which attendees will have the opportunity to engage directly with the speaker.

Students, faculty, and members of the Cornell community are encouraged to attend this opportunity to hear from a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and one of the most compelling interpreters of modern American political history.

Co-hosted by the Cornell Literary Society
Apr
24
Frontiers of Discovery Lecture Series with Dr. Jefferson Cowie
Labor Economics Workshop: Menaka Hampole
Mon, Apr 27
Menaka Hampole

Artificial Intelligence and the Labor Market

Abstract: We utilize recent advances in natural language processing to develop novel measures of workers' task-level exposure to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies from 2010 to 2023, capturing variation across firms and over time. We show that tasks exposed to AI subsequently experience lower labor demand. Employing a model that distinguishes between direct and indirect productivity effects of labor-saving technologies, we identify two variables that summarize the impact of AI on within-firm labor demand: an occupations mean task exposure to AI, and the degree to which this mean exposure is concentrated in a small number of tasks. Higher mean exposure reduces labor demand, whereas more concentrated exposures plays an offsetting role as it allows workers to reallocate their effort to non-displaced tasks. Leveraging exogenous variation in AI adoption linked to firms' pre-existing hiring pipelines, we find empirical support for these predictions. Overall, we observe relatively modest net employment effects due to countervailing forces: reduced demand in AI-exposed occupations is offset by productivity-driven employment increases across all occupations at AI-adopting firms.
Apr
27
Labor Economics Workshop: Menaka Hampole
“My time at the ILR School helped me understand both labor and management perspectives, which has proven to be a solid foundation for my career.”
Rob Manfred
, Commissioner of Major League Baseball
Get to Know: Merrick Osborne
Faculty Spotlight
Merrick Osborne joined the ILR faculty in 2025 as an assistant professor in the Department of Organizational Behavior. He hopes his work will challenge assumptions about how traditionally marginalized people operate and that the findings will help laypeople navigate their workplaces more effectively.
ILRies Change
the Future of Work.
Learn about ILR's impact
Catherwood Library
The Martin P. Catherwood Library is the most comprehensive resource on labor and employment in North America, offering expert research support through reference services, instruction, online guides and access to premier collections.
Find out more
Latest News and Research
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We generate and share knowledge to solve human problems, manage and resolve conflict, establish best practices in the workplace and inform government policy.
Morally Diverse Communities More Accepting of Norm Violations
Apr 23, 2026
Individuals in a morally diverse community tend to believe that the community’s norms are looser. In turn, norm violations are more accepted, and there is a reduced willingness to police transgressions, according to research by Merrick Osborne, assistant professor of organizational behavior.
Morally Diverse Communities More Accepting of Norm Violations
Lovenheim Named Editor of the Journal of Human Resources
Apr 23, 2026
Michael Lovenheim, professor of economics at the ILR School and in the Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, has been appointed the next editor of the Journal of Human Resources.
Lovenheim Named Editor of the Journal of Human Resources
Jonathan Lam ’27 Earns Robinson-Appel Humanitarian Award
Apr 23, 2026
Jonathan Lam ’27 is one of three Cornell undergraduate recipients of this year’s Robinson-Appel Humanitarian Awards, which recognize students for their commitment to community-engaged work addressing pressing social challenges.
Jonathan Lam ’27 Earns Robinson-Appel Humanitarian Award
ILR Hands Out 2026 McPherson Honors and Awards
Apr 22, 2026
ILR faculty and students were recognized at the 33rd annual McPherson Honors and Awards Dinner held on April 20 at the Statler Hotel.
ILR Hands Out 2026 McPherson Honors and Awards
Campus Life
Follow us @cornellilr
ILR students are making a difference at Cornell and beyond! Check out the
ILR Instagram
for a taste of campus life, student internship experiences, engaged learning opportunities and more.
Meet Amanda and learn about her internship this summer 😁
On April 11-12, ILR hosted a conference honoring Harry Katz, who is the Jack Sheinkman Professor of Collective Bargaining, and his contributions to the field of industrial and labor relations.

A former dean of the ILR School and the current director of the Scheinman Institute on Conflict…
Meet Victor, a first-year ILR Ambassador from Miami, Florida! 🌎

Read about his journey, from navigating his first weeks on campus to finding community through sports and organizations at Cornell.
postcards from spring in Ithaca 📸🌸
Meet Lydia Anglin Grant (ILR ‘18) and hear about how ILR impacted her career 👏
Celebrating our Big Red Athletics 🐻

This spring, 19 ILR students are representing Cornell across men’s and women’s NCAA athletics in tennis, track & field, lacrosse, softball, and golf. We’re also proud to celebrate our 4 ILRies on Cornell Men’s Lacrosse who are coming off the team’s 2025 National…