Reporting on economics often focuses on the 24-hour news cycle and the ups and downs of financial markets. But the stock market is not the economy, and Heather Long, in her career as an economic journalist, endeavored to explain how economic issues affected people’s everyday lives. Heather reflects on her career as an economic journalist, highlighting her efforts to look beyond broad statistics to interview workers, small business owners, and job seekers to get a more nuanced and deeper insight into the state of the economy and the wellbeing of people in different parts of the economy and at different levels of income.

Heather is Chief Economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union. She served on the Washington Post’s editorial board from 2021 to 2025, and was the U.S. Economics Correspondent at the Post from 2017 to 2021. Prior to that, she was a Senior Economics reporter at CNN.