Mitchell Hartman

Correspondent

SHORT BIO

Mitchell’s most important job at Marketplace is to explain the economy in ways that non-expert, non-business people can understand. Michell thinks of his audience as anyone who works, whether for money or not, and lives in the economy . . . which is most people.

Mitchell wants to understand, and help people understand, how the economy works, who it helps, who it hurts and why. Mitchell gets to cover what he thinks are some of the most interesting aspects of the economy: wages and inflation, consumer psychology, wealth inequality, economic theory and how it measures up to economic reality.

Mitchell was a high school newspaper nerd and a college newspaper editor. He has worked for The Philadelphia Inquirer, WXPN-FM, WBAI-FM, KPFK-FM, Pacifica Radio, the CBC, the BBC, Monitor Radio, Cairo Today Magazine, The Jordan Times, The Middletown Press, The New Haven Register, Oregon Business Magazine, the Reed College Alumni Magazine, and Marketplace (twice — 1994-2001 & 2008-present).

Mitchell has gone on strike (Newspaper Guild vs. Knight Ridder, Philadelphia, 1985) and helped organize a union (with SAG-AFTRA at Marketplace, 2021-23). Mitchell once interviewed Marcel Marceau and got him to talk.

Latest Stories (2,024)

Jobs added in September

Oct 7, 2011
The 103,000 new jobs are better than the number of jobs added over the summer. But the long-term picture is another thing.

Post office estimates $10 billion loss

Sep 30, 2011
Congress, the White House and the Postmaster General have lots of ideas about how to cut costs. One of them is no more Saturday delivery.

Home prices rise

Sep 27, 2011
The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller Home Price Index says home prices in major cities rose for the fourth straight month. But analysts say that's not going to last.

First Dreamliner delivery at hand

Sep 26, 2011
This week, Boeing delivers its first Dreamliner 787 to Japan. The company sank as much as $20 billion into developing the aircraft. Now it has to sell a lot of planes to earn that back.

Dreamliner takes flight

Sep 26, 2011
Finally, Boeing delivers its first aircraft in more than a decade. The 787 Dreamliner is headed to Japan's All Nippon Airways.

College students fret that few jobs await them

Sep 9, 2011
At Lewis and Clark, students worry about their employment prospects, even if they didn't tune in to President Obama's plan to fix the job market.

Muslim charitable giving shifted to domestic causes after 9/11

Sep 9, 2011
Following the 9/11 attacks, many Muslim charities in the U.S. were forced to shut down. But others were able to grow and prosper.

Knife maker hires amid U.S. economic woes

Sep 8, 2011
Oregon firm's workforce has grown 32% since 2008, showing that demand for products -- including overseas buyers -- is what creates jobs.

Jobless data show only part of economic pain

Sep 6, 2011
The government's unemployment statistics tells us a lot -- but not everything -- about the health of the U.S. economy and its workforce.

Big hurdles to job creation remain

Sep 5, 2011
Private employers are creating jobs every month. But it's not nearly enough to whittle away at the unemployment rate, which remains above 9%