ICS Research Student Destin Royer presents at SUNY Undergraduate Research Conference

Every spring, the SUNY Undergraduate Research Conference brings together a multidisciplinary group of undergraduate students and faculty mentors from across the SUNY system, recognizing student researchers and providing them a forum in which to share their findings.

Destin Royer, Arts & Science ’18, presented his research finding at this years’ conference. Destin spent the fall '16 semester as an ICS research student, analyzing the macro net effect of job creation and destruction in the retail industry. Counter to the national trend of the “hollowing out of the middle” in the early 2000s, the retail sector showed slight growth in middle skill jobs relative to the low skill and high skill tails of the skill distribution.

When describing the results, Destin said that he, “was surprised by the findings, having entered into the research suspecting that the retail industry would see more polarization than other sectors. However, the data clearly show that this is not the case. These findings are exciting in that they provide a glimpse into the potential of the retail market as a fruitful ground for further research into the changing landscape of labor.”

ICS Research Associate, Hassan Enayati, mentored Destin on his research project during the fall.

Destin spent this past summer as a research assistant for Professor Anne Heinrichs at Columbia University and hopes to find a job doing economic research and analysis following graduation.