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General Description

This is an ideal career for visionary thinkers. As an economist, you study the way society uses resources such as land, water, human labour, raw materials, and machinery, to produce, distribute and use goods and services.

Career Advice - Economist Career

You advise businesses and governments on the activity of various markets, and the impact this may have on prices, inflation, interest and exchange rates, taxation levels, wages, employment and unemployment, production levels, and imports and exports. You may study the relationship between supply and demand; the reason people choose particular economic courses of action; and how businesses, governments, and individuals obtain, invest and spend money.

You collect and analyse data, conduct research and develop statistics. You broaden your understanding of economic relationships, trying to find trends, and then produce forecasts and make recommendations on how to improve efficiency and future activities. It is common for economists to specialise within a field, so for example you may choose to be an applied industry economist, an econometrician, an environmental economist, a financial economist, a labour market economist, a resource economist, a taxation economist or a transport economist.

What you do every day

As most economists focus on a particular area of economic activity, your daily tasks may include any numbers of things. You may study and analyse the effect of government economic policies, expenditure, and taxation on the economy and society; test effectiveness of current policies, products or services; or assist in developing new or alternative government economic policies. You may identify ways to improve international competitiveness; research and document the effects of government labour market schemes on economic and industrial growth; or develop predictions, analyse past and present trends, and offer advice on economic issues.

Other tasks include designing methods for obtaining data; developing and using econometric modelling techniques to make forecasts; analysing and interpreting data; writing reports on economic trends and forecasts to notify press and public; and conducting presentations of your findings, hypotheses and advice.

Personality that best fits this career

Overall, economists must have strong analytical, researching and problem solving skills. You should be good at business, commerce and economics. Your job will require you to have strong mathematical and computing skills,  and the ability to conceptualise possible forecasts on the basis of complex and sometimes conflicting information. 

The best economists also have good oral and written communication skills. Not only to interact with colleauges or other professionals effectively during data analysis and findings, but also to write reports, plot statistical graphs and economic models, and present your conlusions, forecasts, and recommendations.

If you like certainties, then economics is not for you. You will need to be able to deal with unexpected outcomes and a visionary thinker, as the economy never stops changing.

Best thing about this career

Economists provide important information for companies, governments, and individuals regarding a range of factors surrounding goods and services. Without the complex work of economists, businesses would have no idea what to expect in the future, and would not be able to make informed business decisions or start new ventures. Your work is fascinating and challenging, and the conclusions you reach will often give you a great sense of job satisfaction. The position of an economist is much respected in the business world, especially in the face of the current financial crisis.

Worst thing about this career

The average employment opportunities can make finding a job difficult, if you are not interested in taking your economic skills into another occupation. As an economist, you may find that people are so reliant on your forecasts and recommendations, that there is pressure to make accurate predictions about the state of the economy. Businesses can use your work as a basis for particular decisions or ventures, and so if you have made a false correlation or analysis, the consequences are going to land on your shoulders. This pressure of expectation and the need to perform accurately can cause stress at work. Worry may spread into your personal time.