David Weil

David Weil is a Professor of Social Policy and Economics at the Brandeis School for Social Science and Social Policy and a Visiting Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Weil served as the Dean of the Heller School for Social Policy at Brandeis from 2017-2022. He was named the Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the US Senate and served in that post from 2014 to January 2017. He was nominated again to that position by President Biden.

Weil is an internationally recognized expert in employment and labor market policy along with regulation and the impacts of industry restructuring on wages, employment, labor markets and work outcomes. He has advised government agencies at the state and federal levels and international organizations on employment, labor, and workplace policies. He is the author of more than 130 articles and five books including The Fissured Workplace (Harvard University Press).

He co-founded the Transparency Policy Project at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation where he is currently based and beginning a new initiative in that area with Professor Archon Fung.

Recognition of his work include being named a Stone Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School; Public Dollar for Public Good Scholar by the Marguerite Casey Foundation; and a Distinguished Scholar by the Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA) as well as receiving the Frances Perkins Intelligence and Courage Award; the Cushing-Gavin Award for Excellence in Labor-Management Relations by the Archdiocese of Boston, and the Susan C. Eaton Scholar-Practitioner Award by LERA.

Weil received his BS in Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University and Master and Ph.D. degrees in Public Policy at Harvard University.