Where Have All the “Workers” Gone? A Critical Analysis of the Unrepresentativeness of Our Samples Relative to the Labor Market in the Industrial–Organizational Psychology Literature

In this article, we demonstrate that samples in the industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology literature do not reflect the labor market, overrepresenting core, salaried, managerial, professional, and executive employees while underrepresenting wage earners, low- and medium-skill first-line personnel, and contract workers. We describe how overrepresenting managers, professionals, and executives causes research about these other workers to...