'I regret that I didn't fight harder,' former labor secretary Robert Reich says

August 21, 202511:30 AM ET
Heard on Fresh Air

Tonya Mosley

Reich served under President Clinton from 1993 to 1997. He opens his new memoir, Coming Up Short, with an apology on behalf of the Baby Boom generation for failing to build a more just society.

TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley. Former labor secretary Robert Reich opens his new memoir with something unusual for a public figure - an apology. An apology on behalf of his generation, the baby boomers, for failing, as he puts it, to build a decent, sustainable and just society. Reich was born in 1946, the same year as presidents Trump, Bush and Clinton, sons of the greatest generation, who came of age in a time of post-war optimism when prosperity and possibility seemed endless. But as Reich tells it, those promises have morphed into widening inequality, bitter political division and unchecked rise of corporate power. His new book, "Coming Up Short: A Memoir Of My America," argues that the choices his generation and others have made helped pave the way to today's fractured democracy and economic disparity. Depressing stuff. But Reich also points to the progress that was made and makes a case for reviving what he calls community and democratic capitalism, rooted in America's founding ideals. Reich is chancellor's professor of public policy emeritus at UC Berkeley, has served in three presidential administrations, and has written 18 books, including "The Work Of Nations," "Saving Capitalism" and "The Common Good." He's also the subject of a new documentary called "The Last Class." Robert Reich, welcome back to FRESH AIR.

ROBERT REICH: Well, thank you, Tonya.

MOSLEY: Before we get to your book, I want to ask you about some news. President Trump recently nominated E.J. Antoni from the Heritage Foundation as the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And that was after firing the former head and claiming without evidence that the agency's numbers were rigged. How alarmed by this move should we be?

REICH: Quite alarmed. Tonya, it's very difficult to talk about one particular Trump initiative that is alarming because so many of them are alarming. He has flooded the zone. But this one really did strike home for me because when I became secretary of labor, I was very strongly urged by my predecessors, by Congress, by everybody who knew about the Bureau of Labor Statistics, to make sure, above all, regardless of what else I did as labor secretary, that the Bureau of Labor Statistics would be guarded, its independence would be protected because it is the crown jewel of all of the data we have in America about what is happening to the economy, what's happening to jobs and wages, where the economy is going. And so it's very important that it be protected from political influence.
https://www.npr.org/2025/08/21/nx-s1-5507068/i-regret-that-i-didnt-fight-harder-former-labor-secretary-robert-reich-says


Honest.