David Leonhardt

David Leonhardt is a Pulitzer Prize–winning senior writer for The New York Times. Leonhardt writes The Morning, the flagship daily newsletter of The New York Times, with a readership of more than five million people—one of the largest audiences in American journalism. In October of 2023, Random House will publish his first book, “Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream.”

Leonhardt draws on decades of writing about the economy to explain the Great Stagnation of recent years, in which life expectancy has declined, economic inequality has soared, and the Black-white wage gap is almost as large as it was in the 1950s. He also offers reason for hope, showing we can revive the American Dream that feels lost to so many people.

He has worked at The Times since 1999 and has previously been an Op-Ed columnist, Washington bureau chief, co-host of The Argument podcast, and the founding editor of The Upshot, a Times section focused on data analysis and visualization. Before joining The Times, he worked at Business Week magazine and The Washington Post and majored in applied math at Yale. Additionally, Leonhardt led the team that developed the idea for live election-night estimates at The Times, now known as the Election Needle. He also led a strategy group that helped Times executives shape the newsroom’s digital future. In 2011, Leonhardt received the Pulitzer Prize for commentary for his columns on the financial crisis and a Gerald Loeb Award for magazine writing.

Leonhardt has served on the boards of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and the Russell Sage Foundation, as well as on the jury of the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence. In the fall of 2023, he will be a senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson School of Global Affairs. Leonhardt frequently appears on television and radio.