He is currently host of the PBS series "Wisdom Keepers" set to premiere on the public network in June 2025.

For 7 years from 2018-2025, Suarez hosted a radio program and several podcast series: On Shifting Ground for KQED-FM, Going for Broke for the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, and "The Things I Thought About When My Body Was Trying to Kill Me" on cancer and recovery for Evergreen Podcasts.

[8] He later worked as a freelance reporter in London and Rome, and in 1981 his coverage of the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II led to his being hired by CBS Radio.

He is also the author of the 1999 book The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration: 1966-1999,[12][13] a social commentary on the causes of the destitution found in the inner city.

He is a contributor to the Oxford Companion to American Politics (June 2012), and wrote the companion volume to a PBS documentary series on the history of Latinos in America, Latino Americans: The 500-Year History That Shaped a Nation published by Penguin in 2013.

Suarez has contributed to many other books, including How I Learned English, Brooklyn: A State of Mind, Saving America's Treasures, and About Men.

His columns, op-eds, and criticism have been published in The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune.

In October 2021, the first two episodes of Suarez's podcast series Going for Broke were released by The Nation magazine in partnership with the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.