From 1982 until 1990, Eklund was employed in the Swedish Ministry of Finance,[1] where he finally held the position of deputy under-secretary of state, and in the Prime Minister's Office, where he was an economic policy adviser and speechwriter to the PM.

He was one of the closest collaborators of Kjell-Olof Feldt, the then Minister of Finance, and was seen as one of the leading modernisers of the Swedish Social Democratic party.

[1] Eklund was also the secretary of a joint effort from the labour movement to write a strategic vision of the future beyond the welfare state (1989).

He is on a number of boards including the Sixth General Pension Fund, and Mistra, a government-funded foundation for environmental research.

En introduktion till samhällsekonomin ("Our Economy: An Introduction to Economics"),[1] which so far has been published in 14 Swedish editions and is translated into both Russian and Chinese.

Eklund has also published a book on climate change, "Vårt klimat" ("Our Climate", 2009), a biography of former Swedish PM Olof Palme (2010, as part of a big history project with biographies of all Swedish Prime Ministers since 1900), and a book about China's economic and political development (2011).