Jheelum Sarkar

Jheelum Sarkar

About Me

I am a PhD candidate in Economics at American University in Washington, DC. My current research focuses on understanding how the future of work, technological change, and large-scale shocks shape who works, under what conditions, and with what consequences for inequality. I am specifically interested in studying work arrangements, digital infrastructure and policy interventions which can improve the work-life balance, healthcare and labor supply. I combine applied microeconometrics with machine learning and non-traditional data. My work builds new measures using text-as-data methods as well as remote-sensing techniques using satellite imagery.

I am on the academic job market in 2026-2027. You can find my CV here.

Research Interests: Labor and Demographic Economics, Applied Microeconomics, Development Economics

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Job Market Paper · Draft: September 2026

Telework Exposure and Female Labor Supply in Emerging Economies: Evidence from India

How does telework affect women's labor supply in emerging markets? In my Job Market Paper, I explore this question in Indian context. Because standard task surveys are often missing for developing countries, I construct novel, occupation-specific telework scores using natural language processing (NLP) framework. For every 1-SD increase in telework exposure, I show that women's labor supply rises by 8.46 percentage points. Notably, these gains are strongest where social constraints are more binding.

Current Draft Research Page