Bernstein has taught at Howard University, Columbia University, and New York University. His areas of interest include "federal, state and international economic policies, specifically the middle class squeeze, income inequality and mobility, trends in employment and earnings, low-wage labor markets, poverty, and international comparisons." He is known as a critic of free trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement. In 1992, Bernstein started working as a senior official at the Economic Policy Institute, 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, until he was selected by Biden. His designated job on the Vice 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 president-elect Barack Obama's economic advisers." Bernstein sits on the Congressional Budget Office's Advisory Committee. He is a contributor at the financial news network CNBC. He also was appointed Executive Director of the Middle Class Working Families Task Force and is responsible for direct management of the project. Paul Krugman, a Nobel laureate in economics and a noted progressive columnist, argued in November 2008 that the centrist makeup of President Barack Obama's economic inner circle, the new Economic Recovery Advisory Board, could be used to "give progressive economists a voice," and he mentioned Bernstein and fellow EPI economist president Lawrence Mishel among others as progressive economists who might be suitable for the board.
Dialogue with heterodoxy
In 2018, Bernstein opened a public dialogue with the proponents of the heterodox branch of economics of Modern Monetary Theory, to which Bill Mitchell, a proponent of MMT, was the first to engage.
Publications
Bernstein's books include All Together Now: Common Sense for a Fair Economy and Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed? . 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 coauthoring The Benefits of Full Employment: When Markets Work for People, where he states that "ow unemployment by itself cannot address all the inequities in society," and advocates that "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.
