Dale Thomas Mortensen (born February 2, 1939) is an American economist. He received his B.A. in economics from Willamette University and his Ph.D. in Economics from Carnegie Mellon University. He has been on the faculty of Northwestern University since 1965. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics jointly along with Christopher A. Pissarides from the London School of Economics and Peter Diamond from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2010 for his work in the labour market most notably, "search frictions' for unemployed people in the labour market.
His research focuses on labor economics, macroeconomics and economic theory. Mortensen is especially known for his pioneering work on the search and matching theory of frictional unemployment. He has extended the insights from this work to study labor turnover and reallocation, research and development, and personal relationships.