Helen Lachs Ginsburg
Helen Lachs Ginsburg (June 25, 1929 – October 8, 2020) was an American economist, activist, and professor who spent her life working on jobs, wages, and public policy. She specialized in labor and social welfare and studied how countries can ensure full employment.
Born in the Bronx, New York, she grew up in Bayside, Queens. She earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Queens College and later a PhD from The New School. In the 1970s she was an associate research professor at New York University, and in the 1980s she taught economics at Brooklyn College.
Ginsburg was a “scholar-activist,” an early advocate for living wages, and a founding member of the National Committee for Full Employment, which Coretta Scott King helped lead. She wrote Full Employment and Public Policy: The U.S. and Sweden (1983), a study of how employment policy works in the U.S. and Sweden, and co-authored Jobs for All: A Plan for the Revitalization of America (1994), a program for full employment.
Her work helped inspire the idea that the government should guarantee jobs for people who want them. She co-founded the National Jobs for All Coalition and the Full Employment Action Council, and she helped organize discussions at Columbia University on full employment, social welfare, and equity.
Ginsburg also published research as a contributor to studies on income maintenance policy and participated in international exchanges, including a 1990 stint as a Guest Scholar in Berlin. She passed away in Queens, New York, on October 8, 2020, at the age of 91. She was married to Nathan Ginsburg.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 20:23 (CET).