Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Good news for people who love bad news

Here's a cheery note to start your morning: Economists are doomed!

Yes, we are in the same category (high paying jobs with no future) as travel agents and newspaper reporters according to Yahoo! Finance:

The Federal government is the largest employer of economists in the country. More than half — 53 percent — of all economists in the U.S. work for declining government sectors, so Uncle Sam's not hiring a lot of economists just now. "Econ" is a hot college major, but most of those newly-minted grads won't find work as traditional economists. Instead, they'll end up in niche sectors in business, finance, insurance, and education. Those set on working as conventional economists better have a Plan B, or a Plan Ph.D, because they'll need one. The economists at BLS do tell us that by 2018, an additional 900 economists will be employed — so the outlook is not as dismal for dismal scientists as it is for, say, travel agents. But if current trends continue, the future isn't promising. "You look at the last 10 to15 years and it has been flat," says Henry Kasper of the BLS. "There's little reason to think it's going to get better."

So it's not technology that's killing economists, it's smaller government? I guess that helps to explain a few things, no?

I personally think economists are like meteorologists; the more we screw up, the more we are in demand!

We are also like chameleons; we can change our stripes and insinuate ourselves pretty much anywhere in the workplace. That is part of what makes "econ" such a great major.

3 comments:

john personna said...

Isn't this a place where the addition of a single word changes everything?

"The Federal government is the largest [single] employer ..."

I'd expect the Federal government to be the largest single employer in many, many, fields. I hope though that they employ a small percentage of the total.

Jens Fiederer said...

53 percent (although I suppose "declining government sectors" might include state and county governments as well) does not sound like a small percentage to me.

Anonymous said...

There are declining government sectors??

Really?

What the heck are they?

Maybe hiring an economist is how you get rid of government sectors!