President Biden has named Jared Bernstein to his Council of Economic Advisors.
Bernstein’s designated job on the Presidential staff is a new position, created because of “the critical nature of the economic challenges facing America.”
Upon his appointment, some journalists claimed that it “contrasts sharply with the more centrist views of many of [previous President] Barack Obama’s economic advisers.”
The position: Advises the president on economic policy.
Jared Bernstein, born in 1955, grew up in Ridgefield, Connecticut and graduated with Ridgefield High School’s class of 1973. He also attended the private Wooster School in Danbury.
His mother, Evelyn Bernstein, was a longtime Ridgefield High School teacher, and his sister, Judy Bernstein, also taught in Ridgefield schools for a time and was president of the teacher’s union.
Bernstein graduated with a bachelor’s degree in music from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied double bass with Orin O’Brien.
He also earned a Master of Social Work from Hunter College as well as a master’s degree in philosophy and a Ph.D. in social welfare from Columbia University.
In 1992, Bernstein started working as a senior official at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a liberal think tank with a focus on issues affecting low- and middle-income working people.
From 1995 to 1996, he served in the United States Department of Labor as Deputy Chief Economist.
He then returned to the EPI, as senior economist and director of the Living Standards Program.
Bernstein has taught at Howard University, Columbia University, and New York University.
Bernstein’s areas of expertise include federal and state economic and fiscal policies, income inequality and mobility, trends in employment and earnings, international comparisons, and the analysis of financial and housing markets.
Bernstein was a senior economist and the director of the Living Standards Program at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.
From 2009 to 2011, Bernstein was the Chief Economist and Economic Adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, Executive Director of the White House Task Force on the Middle Class, and a member of President Obama’s economic team.
Jared Bernstein joined the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in 2011 as a Senior Fellow.
Bernstein sits on the Congressional Budget Office‘s Advisory Committee.
He also was appointed Executive Director of the Middle-Class Working Families Task Force and is responsible for direct management of the project.
Bernstein’s books include All Together Now: Common Sense for a Fair Economy and Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed? (And Other Unsolved Economic Mysteries).
He coauthored the last nine editions of The State of Working America, an ongoing analysis published since 1988 by the Economic Policy Institute, as well as co-authoring The Benefits of Full Employment: When Markets Work for People, where he states that “[l]ow unemployment by itself cannot address all the inequities in society,” and advocates that “[o]ther forms of intervention are still needed to assist disadvantaged populations.”
He is a regular columnist for The American Prospect online, a contributor to the CNBC financial news television network, and an op-ed writer in the New York Times and the Washington Post. He has also written Diary entries on the Daily Kos website.