David Madland

David Madland is a senior fellow and the senior adviser to the American Worker Project at American Progress. He has been called “one of the nation’s wisest young scholars” by Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr.

Madland is the author of Re-Union: How Bold Labor Reforms Can Repair, Revitalize, and Reunite the United States (Cornell University Press, 2021) and Hollowed Out: Why the Economy Doesn’t Work Without a Strong Middle Class (University of California Press, 2015).

He has appeared frequently on television shows, including “PBS NewsHour” and CNN’s “Crossfire”; been cited in such publications as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New Yorker; and been a guest on dozens of radio talk shows across the United States. He has testified before Congress on a number of occasions, as well as several state legislatures.

He writes about the economy and American politics, especially the middle class, economic inequality, labor unions, retirement policy, and workplace standards such as the minimum wage. The Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky noted that he “wrote the first long piece to appear on middle-class economics.”

Madland is the co-author of Interest Groups in American Campaigns, and his dissertation about the decline of the U.S. pension system was honored as the best dissertation of the year by the Labor and Employment Relations Association. He has worked on economic policy for then-Rep. George Miller (D-CA) and has consulted for several labor unions.

Madland has a doctorate in government from Georgetown University and received his bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley. At American Progress, he previously served as the managing director for Economic Policy and the director of the American Worker Project.