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)

The art of the elevator pitch

May 10, 2011
Students from all over the world were invited to give their 60-second elevator pitch via YouTube for MIT's annual entrepreneurial competition this year.

Class of 2011 wary of job prospects

May 6, 2011
The job market may be picking up, but many soon-to-be college graduates still feel uncertain about landing a job after graduation.

Teens face high unemployment

May 6, 2011
As high schools graduate another class, teens face a tough search for their first adult job.

Small business owners tussle with health care reform decisions

Apr 25, 2011
Small business owners across the country are trying to figure out their best financial options in how to provide their employees with health insurance, come the health care reform mandates in 2014.

Is health reform unleashing an entrepreneurial wave?

Apr 22, 2011
Under the Obama health plan, it's supposed to get easier to find and keep affordable insurance if you leave a job and strike out as an individual entrepreneur. But is that actually happening?

A look behind the dreaded IRS audit

Apr 8, 2011
Last year, the government audited more than 1.5 million individual tax returns, an increase of 11 percent over the previous year. So just how bad is the audit experience?

Hospital errors are costing $17 billion a year

Apr 7, 2011
A new study reveals that hospital errors are occurring 10 times the rate previously measured, and are costing billions of dollars a year.

Employment picks up

Apr 1, 2011
The U.S. created 216,000 jobs last month, pushing down the unemployment rate to 8.8 percent. Much of the country is ready to stop thinking about jobs, but millions of Americans remain out of work.

Revolution 2.0 in the Middle East

Mar 28, 2011
Tech-savvy activists are organizing online to create revolutionary change in their countries. Now those tools are influencing many aspects of daily life.

Federal Reserve expected to ease its grip on bank dividends

Mar 18, 2011
As the Fed wraps up its latest round of stress tests, some major banks are expecting be free of the Fed's strict oversight.