I'm a professional economist. On occasion I get asked for my opinion about things relating to aspects of the economy. In July of 2018, I was asked to comment on the labor market for a show called Market Place on NPR. I did a radio piece but they decided my voice was so bad that they just printed my words for the website. :-( Click here to read that piece. You can listen to the audio file but I'm not there.
Later in November of 2018, I was asked by the same reporter to comment on a different aspect of the economy. I did it again. This time they actually used my voice. It was about 5 seconds worth but it is me. I must admit that it's not very good. How I sound to me must be very different than how I sound to you. Click here to hear the short piece.
Addition 1: Apparently, I wasn't too bad in November of 2018 because I was asked for my thoughts again in December of 2018 for the same program. Click here to listen to my comments about economic downturns in 2019.
Addition 2: I must have been on a roll because the same reporter found me to talk about the government shut down that happened at the end of 2018 and into 2019. So click here to hear me in January of 2019. I don't come on until the 1:50 mark and I have exactly 4 seconds of air time.
Addition 3: In both March and April of 2019 the same reporter called and interviewed me again. Neither of those made it on the air or in print. One time I sneezed in the middle of an answer so I figured at one was out. Not sure what I said wrong in the other.
Addition 4: I was contacted by the same reporter in July of 2019 to talk about an increase in the federal minimum wage. That thing was dead on delivery. My voice sounds really muffled. Click here to hear it.
Addition 5: In February of 2020 the same reporter who has contacted me all the other times asked me about wage growth. I talked to him for about 20 minutes but I got cut to about 3 seconds of sound. Click here to listen.
Addition 6: In June of 2020 we were in the middle of a global health pandemic called COVID-19 and protests over the killing of a black man named George Floyd in Minnesota.by police. I was asked to speak about racial unemployment and wealth disparities by the same NPR reporter. Listen here.
Addition 7: In July of 2020, President Donald Trump nominated a completely unfit person, Judy Shelton, to be a member of the board of the Federal Reserve System. It's an important independent group but she believed that it should be more closely tied to the White House, which is dangerous and that the US should go back on the Gold Standard, which is crazy. Here is me explaining to that same NPR reporter what the Gold Standard was about. Listen here.
Addition 8: In September of 2020, I was asked by that same reporter who has contacted me in the past about glitches in the unemployment system in the US. During the global pandemic caused by COVID-19, so many people had been put out of work that the outdated systems in most states crashed. Listen here.
Addition 9: In December of 2020, I was asked by the same reporter who has contacted me many times in the past to comment on the racial wealth gap in the US and its implications during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Listen here.
Addition 10: I was contacted in December of 2020 about changes to state minimum wages that were going into effect on January 1, 2021. At least this was a different NPR reporter than before. However, I got exactly 2 seconds of air time even though I chatted with this woman for an hour. Listen here.
Addition 11: In January of 2021, I was contacted by an entirely different reporter from the NPR show Marketplace about the riots at the Capitol Building in Washington DC after, then president Donald Trump, incited an insurrection. The markets seemed to shrug it all off. Listen here.
Addition 12: In February of 2021, I was contacted again by the first reporter who wanted to talk about the post pandemic recovery to full employment and what that would look like for all Americans. Listen here.
Addition 13: In April of 2021, I was contacted by the first reporter again. He wanted me to speak on the idea of variable minimum wages across the country. By this point, it had been 12 years since the federal minimum wage had been increased. Listen here.
Addition 14: In June of 2021, I was contacted by the reporter who I talked to back for Addition 10. I was asked to comment on racial differences in unemployment and what life would be like for different groups once the COVID-19 pandemic was over. Listen here.
Addition 15: In March of 2022, I was contacted by the same reporter who I talked to for Additions 10 and 14. I was asked to comment on the jobs report set to come out the next day from the government. It was amazing that I talked to this guy for 30 minutes and was on the air for exactly 3 seconds. That's radio. Listen here.
Addition 16: Once again, in March of 2022, I was contacted by the reporter who I first talked to, about how the Federal Reserve Bank could raise interest rates to slow the growth of inflation without causing a recession. I think I might have gotten an entire 12 seconds this time. A record! Listen here.
Addition 17: In August of 2022, I was contacted by that NPR reporter who contacted me for Addition 10. I wonder why only NPR ever calls me. I must be really boring. Anyway, she wanted me to comment on the efforts of the Federal Reserve Bank to stop rampant inflation. I talked to this woman a long time. I'm actually the one who came up with the analogy of a balloon. I also made a very witty (in my opinion) comment about student loan debt. What do I get for my efforts? About 3 seconds at the end of the segment talking about housing markets. Sigh. Listen here.
Addition 18: This one really should be on my page for "Sounds on the TV" but I don't have such a page, so I decided to stick it here. I was contacted in September of 2022 by a local TV news reporter who wanted me to comment on a proposal in the state legislature to do away with state income taxes. I taught this stuff often in my classes so it was pretty low hanging fruit. Back in 2021, I had been contacted by a different local TV news station but that session went so badly that I have not looked for the footage. This one wasn't quite as bad. See here.
Addition 19: In October of 2022, I was contacted by the reporter who reached out to me for additions 10 and 17. She wanted to know my thoughts about signs of disinflation in the economy. For almost a year inflation had been running at record pace. It was making it hard on families to feed themselves. Were things finally cooling off? I talked for 20 minutes and got 4 seconds of airtime. Listen here.
Addition 20: In November of 2022, I was contacted by the main reporter who asks me for my opinion most often about what the numbers which were expected to come from the Federal Reserve on the October 2022 job market would be. It was pretty boring stuff. I did get a whopping 5 seconds of airtime. I should start my own show! Listen here.
Addition 21: In November of 2022, I was contacted by Scripps Network. Apparently, they own a bunch of TV and radio stations around the country. They wanted to talk to me about the shrinking middle class in America. Like Addition 18, this really should be on "Sounds on the TV" but I'm not making another page so everything media related is going to get stuffed on this page. It's rather boring and choppy. Look here.
Addition 22: In December of 2022, I was asked to appear on a local radio station, WWL.com. Earlier in that year I had done a podcast for Tulane University discussing the economics of public corruption. I was doing some research on the topic for a conference to be held in the Spring of 2023. Apparently, these radio people heard that podcast and asked me to appear. The strange thing about doing commercial radio was that even though I was scheduled to be on for 15 minutes, we only spent about 4 minutes talking. Most of the time was spent with commercials. I'd just begin to speak when the guy would jump in and say "we'll be back after a short break." Listen here.
Addition 23: In December of 2022, I was contacted by the guy from NPR who seemed to like to call me regularly. I wonder why? He wanted to know if I felt that a recession was coming in 2023 after we had seen the Federal Reserve Bank raise interest rates a lot to try to control inflation which had risen pretty high by that point. As was normal, I got a whopping 3 seconds of air time. Listen here.
Addition 24: In January of 2023, I was contacted by the reporter from NPR from additions 10, 17 and 19. At the time, inflation was really running high in the US and a report had just come out from the New York Federal Reserve bank about how the impacts of inflation were hitting racial and ethnic groups differently. As normal, I talked to this lady for 30 minutes and got 3 seconds of air time. Listen here.
Addition 25: In February of 2023, I was contacted by a brand new and different reporter from NPR. She wanted my thoughts on unemployment at the time, which was incredibly low given the amount of inflation we were having. I believe I got 5 seconds. A new record! Listen here.
Addition 26: I was asked by the dean of the School of Liberal Arts at Tulane University to record a podcast about "Anti-Racism in the Disciplines". I was asked to talk about what was and was not going on in the field of Economics. The piece was released in late February of 2023. There were a series of these pieces including sociology, communications, political science, etc. To be honest, I was not impressed with the others. I talked about racism in the field of economics. It seemed the others talked about how their professions viewed racism in general but not how it was happening within their field. In any regard, you can listen here and decide.
Addition 27: In March of 2023, I was contacted by a producer from CNN. This was new to me. I was asked if I could respond to a listener question about inflation which was running high then. The piece was for a podcast called "The Assignment with Audie Cornish". I agreed and did two interviews, given some events that took place later. The cool thing is that this ran 20+ minutes and I was able to finish a thought. Listen here.
Addition 28: In April of 2023, I was contacted by a producer for an NPR show called Weekend Edition. They had heard me talking on CNN which is what Addition 27 above is about. They wanted me to speak on the historically low Black unemployment rate. The piece runs an astounding 5 minutes even though I talked to the host for an hour. Not bad by radio standards. Listen here.
Addition 29: In May of 2023, I was contacted by a reporter from the New York Times. He was doing a piece on some legislation in the California House which would have provided reparations to black people. It was a short piece but man did I get a lot of hate mail from it. Interestingly, I'm not a fan of reparations. However, the question put to me was whether or not reparations would help to close the racial income and wealth gap. The answer is, without question, yes. However, I can think of other policy prescriptions to do the same. I wasn't asked about those. Read the piece here.
Addition 30: In May of 2023, I was contacted by a brand new reporter from the NPR show Marketplace. That morning, new statistics were released from the government which showed that initial unemployment claims had risen to their highest levels since the end 2021. The question was whether the economy was heading towards a recession as the Federal Reserve Bank was working to cool inflation which had not been that high in decades. Listen here.
Addition 31: In June of 2023, I was contacted by the original NPR Marketplace reporter who started all of this. They were looking at wage gains which were declining back to normal during that period and wanted to know how people at the bottom of the wage distribution were doing. Listen here.
Addition 32: In September of 2023, I was contacted by NPR show, Marketplace to get my opinion on rising unemployment singling a loosening of a tight labor market and the implications for black workers. I stated that I didn't think the market had ever been that tight to start with and gave my reasons why. Listen here.
Addition 33: In October of 2023, I was contacted by Marketplace to give my opinion on a report released by the Federal Reserve bank which showed that net worth had increased over a period which covered a lot of the Covid 19 pandemic. I was not convinced that it was permanent. Listen here.
Addition 34: In November of 2023, I was contacted by the first Marketplace NPR reporter who ever contacted me to get my thoughts on why the Chairman of the Federal Reserve kept using the term "resilient" in his press conference the day before. I wondered if he meant something else. Listen here.
Addition 35: In November of 2023, an article from the New York Times which quotes me, was published. It was about blacks and union power. It was revisiting economic mobility 50 years after the Memphis sanitation workers strike where MLK was then assassinated in 1968. Read here.
Addition 36: In December of 2023, I was contacted by Marketplace to talk about inflation expectations. Even though prices weren't rising fast, they definitely weren't and will not drop back to the "good ole days." It gave people a lot of anxiety which was odd given that wages had increased also. Listen here.
Addition 37: In April of 2024, I was once again contacted by Marketplace to comment on some recent unemployment numbers, which had just been released. There was a sharp rise in Black unemployment even though all other metrics were heading the other way. It was a puzzle. Listen here.
Addition 38: In May of 2024, I was contacted by a CNN producer to do another episode of "The Assignment with Audie Cornish." If you check out Addition 27 above, you'll see that I did this in March of 2023. Basically, listeners call in with questions and Audie finds experts to answer them. It wasn't my best. Listen here.
Addition 39: In March of 2025, I was contacted by Marketplace on NPR to talk about the reason that the country has so many different measures of unemployment. I got about 4 seconds of airtime but that was probably more than I deserved. Listen here.
Addition 40: In May of 2025, I was contacted by Marketplace on NPR to talk about the impact of mass firings under President Donald Trump on black workers who had jobs with the federal government. I did not get much airtime, but it was an interesting discussion. Listen here.
Addition 41: In September of 2025, I was contacted by a reporter from Yahoo! Finance about the rising rate of unemployment among black workers stated in the August 2025 jobs report. I knew the other economists quoted in the piece. You can read it here.
Addition 42: In September of 2025, the impacts of the August jobs report continued to draw attention to the disproportionate impacts on black workers. I had just given an interview to Yahoo! Finance mentioned in Addition 41, when I was contacted by Newsweek about the same topic. You can read it here.
Addition 43: Back in October of 2024, I was invited to be the keynote speaker at a conference being held at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The theme was about effective ways to teach economics and how to reach more students. While there, I was asked to do an interview for a podcast. The podcast was about teaching economics and what drew me to the profession. It didn't release until July of 2025, but the material didn't age too poorly. Listen here.