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Jared Bernstein

Jared Bernstein, a former deputy chief economist for the U.S. Labor Department, is a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. He is the co-author of seven editions of The State of Working America and the author of All Together Now: Common Sense for a Fair Economy.

Recent Articles

Skills Setback

Jared BernsteinAug 30, 2005

“The economists don't know what they're talking about.”

Granted, this may seem like an odd opening for a piece by two economists, but the guy who said this -- a member of a focus group probing Americans' experiences in the current economy -- has a point.

Policy-makers are waxing ever more enthusiastic about how great things are. In response to the most recent report on the gross domestic product, the research director at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis quipped, "It's kind of boring around here because the economy looks so good.”

Fresh Air

Jared BernsteinJun 22, 2005

This may seem like a weird time for progressives to feel optimistic, but a confluence of recent events suggests the faintest breeze of hope in the air.

Granted, the winds of corruption and shortsightedness still dominate. More so than at any time in recent memory, high-level officials are indistinguishable from right-wing lobbyists, gutting government's ability to regulate corporate power. The Justice Department is throwing the fight against the tobacco companies; the White House is busy editing the science out of regulations that might restrain polluters.

Sunny Forecast

Jared BernsteinMay 23, 2005

An economist's view of the world generally boils down to “every silver lining has a cloud.” Our reputation as dismal scientists, fair or not, makes us especially grateful when we find something to be optimistic about. In that vein, there's one development over the past decade that makes even us feel brighter about the future: the acceleration in productivity growth. Productivity measures economic output per hour of work, and thus offers a basic measure of how fast living standards can rise.

Tax and Interdepend

Jared BernsteinApr 15, 2005

It's tax day, and the mind drifts to interdependent utility functions.

Back in grad school at Columbia, we slogged through microeconomics, learning how individuals sought to “maximize utility,” which roughly translates into becoming as fulfilled as possible, given various constraints. The optimal economy, we learned, was one in which economic agents, or “people,” sought to promote their own well-being. We didn't just take this at face value, though; we constructed pristine mathematical models that proved it.

Ballad of the Beast-Starvers

Jared BernsteinMar 15, 2005

In early 2005, the Bush administration released its budget for fiscal year 2006 (which goes from October 2005 to September 2006). And, for the first time, the Bush administration serves up big spending cuts. So it's worth checking out for whom the axe falls. In addition, the longer-term priorities of the administration and its backers are just under the surface.

First, the short-run impacts, primarily spending cuts to human services programs, have gotten the most attention. But the long-run implications are particularly worrisome. Lurking behind these reams of tables and numbers is a mission to significantly shrink government.

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