Milkman's grandparents emigrated to the United States around 1910, and the family's last name was allegedly bestowed on them by an immigration official at Ellis Island.

In 2009, Milkman returned to the CUNY Graduate Center, and took up her present position of Research Director at the Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies.

The book was cited for being "rich in the variety of detailed case material offered in exploring the experiences of women employed in many occupations and industries around the country.

[10] Her second major work, Farewell to the Factory: Autoworkers in the Late Twentieth Century, questioned the common assumption that technological changes are almost always negative for skilled and unskilled blue-collar workers, and was well-reviewed within the industrial relations and labor history academic communities.

"[12] Labor union activists pointed to the chapters by Bronfenbrenner and Hickey, DiNardo and Lee, Sharpe, Penney and Lopez as important in improving organizing practices.

In 2006, Milkman released L.A. Story, a case study of four organizing campaigns in Los Angeles, California, which drew some remarkable conclusions.

In some ways, Milkman's conclusions are reminiscent of the institutionalist and Hegelian historicist perspective of older labor theorists such as Selig Perlman, Philip Taft and John R. Commons.

[citation needed] Milkman co-authored a 2009 study of low-wage workers in New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago which found that these laborers are routinely denied overtime pay and often illegally paid less than the minimum wage.

Her book, Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by Sex during World War II,[13] won the 1987 Joan Kelly Memorial Prize in Women's History from the American Historical Association (AHA).