As protests flared up over the summer on racial inequality, Mr. Bernstein co-wrote a paper urging the Fed to expand its focus and look beyond the overall labor market to target the Black unemployment rate specifically. Mr. Biden's campaign later endorsed that idea.

During the Obama administration, Mr. Bernstein served as the executive director of the White House task force on the middle class. Before joining the administration, he was a senior economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, where he studied income inequality and low-wage labor markets. He served as the deputy chief economist at the Labor Department from 1995 to 1996.

Mr. Adeyemo worked during the Obama administration as the Treasury Department's lead negotiator on the currency agreement that was part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, and on the response to sovereign-debt crises in Ukraine and Greece. In 2010, he was one of the first officials charged with setting up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where he served under Ms. Warren, a connection likely to help him win over party progressives.

Mr. Obama later tapped him to serve as his deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs.

"He knows the building inside and out, knows all the different policy areas Treasury does, which are wide and extensive," said Ernie Tedeschi, a former Obama administration Treasury Department economist and policy analyst at Evercore ISI. "Between economics and finance and markets, Wally is familiar with them all."

Write to Ken Thomas at ken.thomas@wsj.com and Kate Davidson at kate.davidson@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

11-29-20 2214ET