William E. Spriggs, who sought to stamp out racial injustice in society and in his own profession in a four-decade career in economics, died Tuesday in Reston, Virginia. He was 68.
The AFL-CIO, for which Dr. Spriggs, chief economist for more than a decade, announced his death. His wife of 38 years, Jennifer Spriggs, said the cause was a stroke.
Dr. Spriggs, one of the most prominent black economists of his generation, served as assistant secretary of labor in the Obama administration and held other public sector positions earlier in his career. But he was best known for his work outside of government as an outspoken and oft-cited advocate for workers, especially black workers.
In addition to his role at the Washington-based AFL-CIO, he was a professor at Howard University, where he mentored a generation of black economists as he pushed for change within a field dominated by white men.
“Bill was someone who was very attached to the idea that we do economics because we have a social purpose,” William A. Darity Jr., a Duke University economist and longtime friend, said in a telephone interview. “That this is not a discipline that should only be used for playing parlor games, and that we should use the ideas we develop from economics to design social policies that will make the lives of most people much better.”
Dr. Spriggs worked on a variety of issues, including trade, education, the minimum wage, and social security. But the topic he returned to most often and spoke most passionately about was that of racial disparities in the labor market. Black Americans, he pointed out time and time again, consistently faced double the unemployment rate of white people—a disturbing fact that he says has received too little attention from economists.
“Economists have tried to rationalize this disparity by saying it merely reflects differences in skill levels,” Dr. Spriggs in an op-ed in The New York Times in 2021, before then dismissing that claim with a striking statistic: The unemployment rate for white high school dropouts is almost always lower than the overall black unemployment rate.
During the nationwide racial reckoning after George Floyd’s death in 2020, Dr. Spriggs wrote an open letter to his fellow economists sharply criticizing the field’s approach to race — not just because it failed to persuade black economists to recruit and retain, which had been extensively documented, as well as in economic research.
“Modern economics has deep and painful roots that too few economists recognize,” wrote Dr. Spriggs. “In the hands of far too many economists, African Americans are left with the assumption that they are inferior until proven otherwise.”
Biden administration officials said they had discussed Dr. Spriggs in senior economic policy positions. Ultimately, he remained on the outside, publicly and privately urging the administration not to go back on its commitment to ensure a strong economic recovery. In recent months, he has been an outspoken critic of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive efforts to curb inflation, of which Dr. Spriggs warned that black workers would be disproportionately hurt.
“Bill was a towering figure in his field, a pioneer who challenged the field’s basic assumptions about racial discrimination in the labor market, equal pay and worker empowerment,” President Biden said in a statement Wednesday.
William Edward Spriggs was born on April 8, 1955 in Washington to Thurman and Julienne (Henderson) Spriggs. He was raised there and in Virginia. His father had served as a fighter pilot in the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II and later became a physics professor at Norfolk State University in Virginia and at Howard, Washington, both historically black institutions.
His mother was also a veteran and became a public school teacher in Norfolk after receiving her college degree while her son was in primary school.
“I remember studying history together,” Dr. Spriggs later talked about his mother in a White House blog post written while he was working at the employment office. “She would look at children’s books on the subjects she was learning about.”
Dr. Spriggs received a bachelor’s degree in economics and political science from Williams College in Massachusetts and attended the University of Wisconsin, where he received a master’s degree in 1979 and a doctorate in 1984, both in economics. While in graduate school, he co-chaired the graduate student union and helped rebuild after a largely unsuccessful strike the previous year.
Dr. Spriggs stood out in Wisconsin, and not just because he was the only black graduate student in the economics department, recalled Lawrence Mishel, a classmate who later served as president of Washington’s Economic Policy Institute, where Dr. Spriggs also for several years.
Even as a graduate student, Dr. Mishel said, Mr. Spriggs was skeptical of the orthodox theories his professors taught about how companies determine workers’ wages — theories that left no room for discrimination or forces other than supply and demand. And unlike most students, Mr. Spriggs wasn’t interested in working for the best school he could find a job at; he wanted to work for a historically black institution, like his father.
He got his wish and taught first at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro and then at Norfolk State University – where his father also worked – before taking a series of jobs in government and left-wing think tanks. He returned to academia in 2005 when he joined Howard. He was chairman of the economics department from 2005 to 2009.
In addition to his wife, whom he met in graduate school, his survivors include their son William; and two sisters, Patricia Spriggs and Karen Baldwin.
Dr. Spriggs played a defining role in the careers of dozens of younger economists.
“I wouldn’t be an economist today without Bill Spriggs,” said Valerie Wilson, director of the program on race, ethnicity, and economics at the Economic Policy Institute.
Dr. Wilson was taking a break from graduate school and was considering leaving the field altogether when one of her professors recommended her for a job with Dr. Spriggs at the National Urban League. He helped restore her passion for economics by showing her an approach to work that was less theoretical and more focused on the real world, she said. After two years with the Urban League, she told Dr. Spriggs that she would go back to graduate school.
His response: “We need you in the business.”
Jim Tankersly reporting contributed.
