She previously held positions at Tufts University and Cambridge, lecturing meanwhile at academic institutions throughout India. She is one of the founders of the Economic Research Foundation in New Delhi, a non-profit trust devoted to progressive economic research. (Selections of her columns from the Macroscan, the Foundation's outlet, will be published as Tracking the Macroeconomy.) She is also Executive Secretary of the International Development Economics Associates (IDEAS), a network of economists critical of the mainstream economic paradigm of neo-liberalism.

She was the principal author of the West Bengal Human Development Report which has received the UNDP Prize for excellence in analysis.In addition to her many scholarly articles, she writes regular columns on economics and current affairs for Frontline magazine, Businessline, the Bengali newspaper Ganashakti, Deccan Chronicle, and Asian Age. Professor Ghosh lives in New Delhi. It is little known, but she is very well educated in Western Classical music and occasionally lectures on the genius of Mozart et al. Jayati Ghosh writes a regular column for the fortnightly national magazine "Frontline" focusing mainly on economic issues related to the common man.

She is married to Abhijeet Sen an economist who is now a member of Planning Commission.