Richard V. Burkhauser joined PAM in 1998. In 2012 he began a joint appointment as a Professorial Research Fellow at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research (University of Melbourne).  He spent January through June at the University of Melbourne and July through December at Cornell University through 2015.  In 2016 he spent part of the year at the University of Melbourne, part at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas--Austin, and part at Cornell. In January 2017 he became Emeritus Sarah Gibson Blanding Professor of Policy Analysis and Management. He resigned from LBJ School of Public Affairs and the Department of Economics at the University of Texas--Austin in September 2017 to become a Member of President Trump's Council of Economic Advisers, a position he held until May 2019. Since January 2023 he has been a Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute, University of Texas--Austin. Currently he is also an AEI Visiting Scholar, IZA Research Fellow, and NBER Research Associate.

His professional career has focused on how public policies affect the economic behavior and well-being of vulnerable populations, e.g., older persons, people with disabilities, low-skilled workers as well as how levels and trends in income and income inequality have changed in the USA and other countries.