William Beach

On March 28, 2019, William Beach departed Mercatus to become the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Read the announcement.

William Beach served as vice president at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University from February of 2016 to March of 2019. Before joining Mercatus, Beach served as the Chief Economist for the Senate Budget Committee, Republican Staff. Prior to that position he was the Lazof Family Fellow in Economics at Heritage and director of the Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis (CDA). As CDA Director, Beach oversaw Heritage’s original statistical research on Social Security, crime, education, trade and a host of other issues. He was instrumental in developing the state-of-the-art econometric models Heritage uses to estimate, in detail, how, for example, proposed tax changes will likely affect individuals, families, and various business sectors-as well as the overall national economy. Prior to joining Heritage in 1995, Beach served as a senior economist in the corporate headquarters of Sprint United, Inc., and, from 1991, as the president of the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University. A graduate of Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas, Beach also holds a master’s degree in history and economics from the University of Missouri-Columbia and a Ph.D. in Economics from Buckingham University in Great Britain. He also is a Visiting Fellow in Economics at Buckingham.