An expert on unions and economic forecasting, he was well-known to the public through his popular writing, and was considered by many to be the pre-eminent labor economist of the 1940s and 1950s.
[1][2][3] He was an advocate of collective bargaining, but at times supported legislation limiting unions.
[8] A regular lecturer and contributor to magazines such as Harper's,[9] Slichter was arguably the best-known economist in America at the peak of his career.
Slichter correctly predicted that with soldiers coming home seeking a normal life and material pleasures, the economy would grow strongly after the end of the war and that inflation would be a greater cause for concern than depression.
[15][16][17] Slichter was the first major economist to recognize that the pool of labor from comparably skilled workers was not unified across the economy but rather segmented by industry, with supply and demand curves varying as a function of the industry's profitability.