Clarity when it matters most

With federal funding gone, your monthly support powers PBS News
Paul Solman

About Paul

Paul Solman has been a correspondent for the PBS News Hour since 1985, mainly covering business and economics.

While attending Brandeis University, Solman joined the Brandeis newspaper, The Justice, and eventually became its editor. He got his first journalism job in 1970 at the alternative weekly Boston After Dark.

Solman became founding editor of the rival alternative weekly The Real Paper in 1972 and went on to become a feature writer and investigative reporter.

Solman received an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1978.

After a few years of local PBS reporting, he inaugurated the PBS business documentary series, ENTERPRISE with fellow Nieman Fellow Zvi Dor-Ner.

In the 1980s, Solman produced documentaries, returned to local reporting, and joined the Harvard Business School faculty, teaching media, finance and business history in the school's Advanced Management Program. He also co-authored “Life and Death on the Corporate Battlefield” in 1983, which appeared in Japanese, German and Taiwanese editions. He joined the MacNeil/Lehrer Report in 1985.

In the '90s, with sociologist Morrie Schwartz, a teacher of his at Brandeis, Solman helped create -- and wrote the introduction to the book "Morrie: In His Own Words," which preceded "Tuesdays with Morrie.” In 2015, Solman co-authored “Get What's Yours: the Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security.”

Solman has lectured on college campuses since the '80s and has written for numerous publications, including the Journal of Economic Education. As a one-time cab driver, kindergarten teacher, crafts store co-owner and management consultant, he was also the author and presenter of "Discovering Economics with Paul Solman," a series of videos to accompany introductory economics textbooks.

In 2007, he joined the faculty at Yale, where he contributed to the university's Grand Strategy course for a decade. In 2011, he was the Richman Distinguished Visiting Professor at his alma mater, Brandeis, where he taught a seminar, "Economic Grand Strategies: From Chimps to Champs? Or Chumps?" He has taught regularly at West Point, the Naval War College and was an adjunct faculty member at Gateway Community College in New Haven, CT, where he created the evening program, “Yale@Gateway.” In 2016, he was a Visiting Fellow at Mansfield College, Oxford University.

Since 2019, Solman has chaired the board of the anti-polarization American Exchange Project, a nonpolitical nonprofit domestic "foreign exchange" program that introduces high school seniors from everywhere in America to each other, sends and embeds them, for free, in communities unlike their own.

Solman took up tennis at 50. His father was the American expressionist artist Joseph Solman. He is married with two children and seven grandchildren.

Full Bio

Paul’s Recent Stories

Economy Apr 25

Will We Ever Get to ‘Full Employment’?

By Paul Solman A man enters a Shoe Carnival store in Morton Grove, Ill. Photo by Tim Boyle/Getty Images. Paul Solman answers questions from the NewsHour audience on business and economic news here on his Making Sense page. Here…

Economy Apr 12

Does Obama Have It Right or Wrong on Social Security?

Staffers pick up their copies of the President's Fiscal Year 2014 Budget at the Senate Budget Committee in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on April 10, 2013. Photo By Douglas Graham/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images. Today we present a range of…

Economy Apr 12

Does Obama Have it Right or Wrong on Social Security?

By Paul Solman Staffers pick up their copies of the President's Fiscal Year 2014 Budget at the Senate Budget Committee in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on April 10, 2013. Photo By Douglas Graham/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images. Today we present…

Economy Apr 05

How Dismal Were March’s Job Numbers?

At first blink, today's jobs numbers don't look too bad. The official unemployment number dipped again, to 7.6 percent. The number of people reporting that they didn't work even one hour last week and looked for work and are therefore…

Economy Apr 05

How Dismal Were March’s Job Numbers?

By Paul Solman At first blink, today's jobs numbers don't look too bad. The official unemployment number dipped again, to 7.6 percent. The number of people reporting that they didn't work even one hour last week and looked for work…

Economy Mar 22

Economic Inequality: Isn’t it Inevitable?

If you get equal opportunity -- an equal slice of the educational cake or pie -- that doesn't necessarily mean you will have equal economic opportunities as a result. Paul Solman answers a reader's question on why, so many times,…

Support Provided By: Learn more