Peter Philips grew up in Compton and Pomona, California. He received his B.A. from Pomona College where he received the Leland Backstrand Graduating Senior Award in Economics. Philips received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University. Philips is married with two children.

Philips is a Professor of Economics at the University of Utah. He is co-editor of Three Worlds of Labor Economics (M.E. Sharpe, 1986) and co-author of Portable Pensions for Casual Labor Markets: the Central Pension Fund of the Operating Engineers (Quorum Books, 1995). Philips has published widely on the canning and construction industries in journals such as the Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Industrial Relations, Business History Review, the Journal of Economic History, The Journal of Economic Literature, The Journal of Education Finance, and the Cambridge Journal of Economics.

Philips has also been a consultant for the U.S. Labor Department analyzing the supply of cannery labor in California and has worked as an expert on the Davis-Bacon Act for the U.S. Justice Department. [The Davis-Bacon Act regulates wage payments to construction workers on federal public works.]

Philips is a respected expert on prevailing wage laws and on employment, training, wages and benefits in the construction industry. He has testified before state legislative committees in Ohio, Indiana, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and California on their state prevailing wage laws. Along with other researchers at the University of Utah, Philips has analyzed the effects of prevailing wage laws on public construction costs, construction worker incomes, apprenticeship training, and worker safety and minority access to construction work.

Philips has served as an economic consultant for interest wage arbitrations at Los Alamos National Laboratories. He often gives presentations before management and union groups on the state and prospects of the economy in general, and the construction economy in particular. Philips research also appears in various industrial journals including Engineering News Record, Cockshaw's Construction Labor News and the Reeves Journal.

Philips has received awards for his teaching and community service including the University of Utah Public Service Professorship, the University of Utah Presidential Teaching Scholar Award, and the University of Utah College of Social and Behavior Science Superior Teacher Award.

Three recent papers:

"Women, Technology and the Gender Division of Labor in Manufacturing," Research in Economic History Vol. 16, 1996 (co-authored with Jens Christiansen and Mark Prus) pp. 103-126.

"A Step in the Right Direction--Friedman's New Estimates of Union Membership: The United States, 1880-1912," Historical Methods, A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, Volume 32, Number 2, Spring 1999, pp. 87-92.

"Prevailing Wage Regulations and School Construction Costs: Evidence from British Columbia," (with Cihan Bilginsoy) Journal of Education Finance, Volume 24 (Winter 2000) pp. 415-432.