He is a childhood friend and schoolmate of comedian Desus Nice. Hayes attended New York City’s prestigious Hunter College High School, where his classmates included Immortal Technique and Lin-Manuel Miranda, the latter of whom he directed in his first musical. After graduating, Hayes attended Brown University, from which he graduated in 2001 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy.

Beginning in August 2001, for four years Hayes was a contributor to the independent weekly newspaper Chicago Reader, where he covered local and national politics. In late 2003, he began a four-year stint at In These Times, a labor-focused monthly magazine based in Chicago, where he was a senior editor.

From 2005 to 2006, Hayes was a Schumann Center Writing Fellow at In These Times. From 2006 through 2007, Hayes was a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute, and a contributing writer for The Nation. On November 1, 2007, The Nation named him its Washington, D.C. editor, succeeding David Corn.

On July 14, 2007, Hayes married his college sweetheart Kate Shaw, a former Supreme Court law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens who is currently a professor of law at the Yeshiva University Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and a Supreme Court contributor for ABC News; they met while attending Brown together. His father-in-law is veteran Chicago reporter Andy Shaw. Hayes and Shaw resided in Washington, D.C., until they moved to New York City, where All in With Chris Hayes is produced. They have three children.

Hayes’ brother Luke worked on Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns.

Hayes guest-hosted The Rachel Maddow Show in July 2010 while Maddow was traveling in Afghanistan and later often filled in for Maddow when she was absent. Hayes has also hosted other MSNBC shows such as The Ed Show, Countdown With Keith Olbermann, and The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell.

On November 5, 2010, MSNBC announced that Hayes would be filling in for Keith Olbermann during Olbermann’s suspension. However, the network later backtracked after finding out that Hayes had also made political contributions—the issue over which Olbermann was being suspended.

Hayes criticized the United States government’s decision to charge WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange under the Espionage Act of 1917 for his role in the 2010 publication of a trove of Iraq War documents and diplomatic cables leaked by Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. Hayes tweeted: “The Espionage indictment of Assange for publishing is an extremely dangerous, frontal attack on the free press. Bad, bad, bad.”

On August 1, 2011, MSNBC announced that Hayes would host a two-hour morning show on Saturdays and Sundays, each going into depth on current issues. The first airing of Up with Chris Hayes was September 17, 2011, and featured a live interview with former speaker and current Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

On May 27, 2012, Memorial Day Weekend, Hayes made comments on air regarding the use of the word “heroism” as applied to American servicemen killed in action, stating, “I feel uncomfortable about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. And I don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect the memory of anyone that’s fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism, you know, hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers, and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I’m wrong about that.” His remark generated widespread controversy. Hayes initially defended his comment by urging people to listen to what he had actually said. Nonetheless, he apologized on his blog. Furthermore, on his June 2, 2012, show, he devoted a discussion to his comments and the disconnect between civilians and the military.

Hayes’s first book, Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy was published by Crown Publishing Group in June 2012. A review in The Atlantic called it “provocative” and “thoughtful,” but faulted its policy suggestions as less satisfying. Kirkus Reviews called it “forcefully written” and “provocative.” Aaron Swartz described the book as “compellingly readable, impossibly erudite, and—most stunningly of all—correct.”

On March 14, 2013, MSNBC announced that Hayes would take over the time slot formerly hosted by Ed Schultz, who would move to the weekends. At 34 years old, he became the youngest host of a prime-time show on any of the country’s major cable news channels.

Hayes’ second book, A Colony in a Nation, was published by W. W. Norton in March 2017.

Hayes participated in the 2017 Brooklyn Book Festival (BKBF).

In April 2017 he was a featured author at the L.A. Times Festival of Books, which took place at the campus of USC.

In May 2018, Hayes launched a weekly podcast called Why Is This Happening?, featuring interviews with political figures, activists, journalists, writers, and academics. The podcast’s first live episode was recorded in November 2018, at Congregation Beth Elohim, in Brooklyn, New York, with author Ta-Nehisi Coates. Hayes’ second live episode, held on February 24, 2019, featured an interview with Georgia politician and activist, Stacey Abrams.