Economics Careers and Job Outlook
by admin on Jan.26, 2009, under Economics Posts
Studying economics will provide you with quantitative skills, critical thinking skills, and allow you to use threshold concepts. These skills are increasingly in demand from government and the private sector, including the finance and pharmaceutical industry.
The wikipedia definition suggests that “An economist is an expert in the social science of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy.” But essentially economists analyze how people create goods and services by allocating limited resources like raw materials, land, technology, and labor. They do this by researching and monitoring things like exchange rates, business trends, taxation, employment rates, inflation, and costs of materials. They then try to find trends and develop predictions based on the data.
Many corporations require the skills of microeconomists, like projecting customer demand or product sales, both of the client firm and their competitors to maximize profit. These economists also review new legislation, like minimum wage requirements or tariffs, and how it will affect their client. Large business with many smaller branches might also have economists assess the economy of countries where branches exists or where they are looking to open new branches. Smaller businesses often hire economists as consultants or those who work in research firms. Consulting firms in the United States provide a large proportion of the macroeconomic study and prediction by gathering many different statistics, compiling large databases, finding trends. These firms often publish their findings.
Governments also employ a large percentage of economists, across many of their department. Both the US Federal Government and the United Kingdom’s Government Economic Service are major recruiters of economists. Often their work is to forecast the consequences of new legislation or policies, or use cost benefit and welfare analysis to provide evidence for the usefulness of a policy proposal.
Different types of economists
- Microeconomists: These people study individual companies or people. They look at supply and demand to find out how to maximize production, for example, or to project how high the demand for a particular product would be.
- Macroeconomists: They look at the economy as a whole to find long-term, overarching trends throughout history. They can then make generalizations and draw conclusions about investment productivity, inflation, unemployment, etc.
- International Economists: They look at markets internationally, studying currency exchange and the effects of tariffs and trade procedures and laws.
- Organizational or Industrial Economists: They examine the markets of individual industries, studying competitors and making predictions based on the decisions of competitors. They may also be involved in protecting the industry against trusts and monopolies
- Labor Economists: They look at trends in salary, such as how it’s determined, and the need for labor. They are especially interested in causes of unemployment and the results of changes in demographic, such as a baby boom, on labor.
- Public Finance Economists: They look at the government’s involvement in the economy, such as taxation, deficits or surpluses in budget, or policies concerning welfare.
- Econometricians: They use mathematics and statistics to display empirical evidence using methods like calculus and regression analysis. These models explain economic happenings and help to project future economic occurrences and trends.
Economics Career Potential and Job Outlook
The number of jobs for economists is expected to grow in the future.
A lot of growth potential is located in the private sector, most notably in scientific research and consulting firms. The higher demand for the services of economists will be caused by the increasing intricacy of the world economy, higher competition, and the fact that more and more business predictions are based on quantitative analysis. As the skills of economists become more valuable in many different industries, there will be more and more jobs. However, as the popularity of consulting firms increase the need of companies for in-house economists decreases.
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