In 2008, Time magazine named him one of the Ten Best Cabinet Members of the century,[10] and in the same year The Wall Street Journal placed him sixth on its list of Most Influential Business Thinkers.

[11] Reich has published numerous books,[12] including the best-sellers The Work of Nations (1991), Reason (2004), Supercapitalism (2007), Aftershock (2010), Beyond Outrage (2012), and Saving Capitalism (2015).

[16] As a teenager, he was diagnosed with multiple epiphyseal dysplasia, also known as Fairbank's disease, a genetic disorder that results in short stature and other symptoms.

This condition made Reich a target for bullies and he sought out the protection of older boys; one of them was Michael Schwerner, who was one of the three civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi by the Ku Klux Klan in 1964 for the registration of African-American voters.

At Yale, he was a classmate of Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham, Clarence Thomas, Michael Medved, and Richard Blumenthal.

From 1980 until 1992, Reich taught at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he wrote a series of books and articles, including The Next American Frontier and The Work of Nations.

[24] In the very early days of the administration, Reich was seen as one of the most powerful members of the Clinton cabinet, both for his friendship with the President and his ambitious agenda for the Department of Labor.

Reich envisioned Labor as the nucleus of a cluster of agencies, including the departments of Commerce and Education, which could act in tandem to break down traditional bureaucratic barriers.

[25] Consistent with the 1992 Clinton platform and his writings before taking office, Reich called for more federal spending on jobs training and infrastructure.

[27] During his tenure, he implemented the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and successfully lobbied to increase the national minimum wage.

Reich served as leading public and private spokesman for the Clinton administration against organized labor, who continued to oppose the Agreement as a whole.

He further argued that trade liberalization following World War II had led to the "biggest increase in jobs and standard of living among the industrialized nations [in] history.

But the sad irony is that massive change on the scale we are now facing may be inviting the opposite reaction: a politics of preservation, grounded in fear."

He further admitted that he regretted "not doing more to strengthen [NAFTA]'s labor and environmental side-agreements", though he denied supporting an expedited "fast-track" legislative process without opportunity for amendment.

With the approval of the White House, he delivered the first of four major speeches on the emergence of a new "anxious class" of Americans concerned with increased global competition and technological change.

[26] After a disastrous showing for the Democratic Party in the November 1994 midterm elections, Reich returned to the forefront of the Clinton economic team.

[26] In February 1995, Reich met opposition within the administration over his proposal to ban government contractors from permanently replacing striking workers.

"[26] In December 1995, Reich delivered a commencement speech at the University of Maryland, College Park, in which he decried the increasing tendency of wealthy, educated Americans to divide themselves from the general population as "the secession of the successful America".

Among those he criticized in the tell-all were Clinton advisor Dick Morris, former AFL-CIO head Lane Kirkland, and Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan, a leading deficit hawk whom he considered "the most powerful man in the world".

[27] After publication of the book, Reich received criticism for embellishing events with invented dialogue which did not match C-SPAN tapes or official transcripts of meetings.

He instead endorsed the then-little-known candidacy of Deval Patrick, who had previously served as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the Clinton Administration.

[51][52] In 2013, he teamed up with filmmaker Jacob Kornbluth to produce the documentary Inequality for All, based on his book Aftershock which won a Special Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival.

[53] In 2022, Reich was featured in The Simpsons season finale "Poorhouse Rock", where he briefly explains the economic decline of the American middle class during a musical sequence.

"[57] Writing in 2014, he stated that he favors raising the federal minimum wage to $15/hr across three years, believing that it will not adversely impact big business, and will increase higher value worker availability.

[61] He supported making a 120-year-old triplex a landmark to prevent the construction of a 10-apartment building, one of which would be deed restricted to be rented to a low income tenant, citing "the character of the neighborhood".

"[66][better source needed] In September 2005, Reich testified against John Roberts at his confirmation hearings for Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

[74][75] In an April 2022 op-ed published on The Guardian, he criticized Elon Musk's efforts to take over Twitter, opining that the "libertarian vision of an 'uncontrolled' internet" is "dangerous rubbish".

[83] During their marriage, the couple had two sons: Sam, CEO and owner of Dropout (previously known as CollegeHumor), and Adam, a sociology professor at Columbia University.

Reich was born with multiple epiphyseal dysplasia, a form of dwarfism also known as "Fairbank's disease" and stands 4 feet 10 inches tall, an issue he publicly addressed in a July 2023 Blog post titled "Why I'm So Short".