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The lastest stories and analysis on the Economist job market

Some potential impacts of Brexit on real wages

On 23 June 2016, the UK voted, in its referendum on EU membership, to leave the EU. British exit from the EU is commonly referred to as “Brexit”. In this note we shall consider five ways Brexit might be expected to effect real wages: GDP; the share of wages in GDP; immigration; regulation; and prices. First, other things being equal, one would expect real wages to be higher if real GDP is higher and lower if it is lower. Almost all economists (in...

When story-telling is censorship: How independent is your research?

“Into the woods you have to grope, but that’s the way you learn to cope. “Into the woods to find there’s hope of getting through the journey.” So sing the Baker, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack (of the beanstalk fame) in Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods. Sondheim himself was caught up in a brief independence and censorship controversy over whether or not Disney wanted to exclude a decidedly 18+ rated encounter between Cinderella’s P...

The job description-reality gap

We left our heroes, Bathsheba Everdene and Gabriel Oak, trying to get a good price for their sheep at careers fair. This week’s analogy is another market, the oriental bazaar stall that is the job description. You can browse without any commitment and see if something takes your fancy, though you may be hassled by hawkers of sponsored links along the way. Some stalls are stuffed with boxes and illuminous yellow star-shaped hand-scrawled price tag...

Conference utility-maximisation

This next slide shows the two research questions I sought to answer in my PhD. Students scored on average 4.26, which is between 4 and 5. What’s really interesting about this chart is that… I have copies of the full report here if anyone would like one. No? Please take one! I don’t want to have to carry them back with me on the plane. Tea or coffee? Where are you from? It’s academic conference season, that small window between when the students f...

How to Clean Up Your Online Presence and Make a Great First Impression

Odds are someone is searching the web for you right now, or at least has looked you up fairly recently. Do you know what they learned? Better yet, do you control the pages and profiles they visited? If not, it's time to take your online reputation into your own hands instead of leaving it to Google. Here's how. Why First Impressions Matter on the Internet It's no secret that friends, nosy family members, and potential employers will all take to...

5 reasons for using niche job sites

Job hunting is never quick and easy, but there are ways to streamline your search for the perfect economist role, cutting out time and stress for you. Thankfully today everyone has access to highly-targeted, specialist job boards, covering just about every career sector under the sun – from economics, to sales, to automotive, to travel sector jobs to name just a few. Niche job boards are industry-specific, posting jobs within a concentrated indus...

I am not a role model

“I am not a role model. I am not paid to be a role model… Just because I dunk a basketball doesn't mean I should raise your kids,” said Charles Barkley in 1993 when advertising a brand of sportswear. Unfortunately, Barkley could do nothing to stop the legion of kiddywinkles who wanted emulate his particular basketball-dunking, moustache-wearing brand of cool. No one chooses to be a role model. It comes with certain positions, such as professional...

New year, new job

Our new year’s resolution is to help you get a job and, unlike normal resolutions, it’s not one we’ll be giving up on after a week of failed attempts to get up at 6.00am to go to the gym. For us, it starts with writing this post. For you, the first step is to decide that you want a new job. Once you’ve decided that you definitely want to do something, you see, the next steps become obvious, starting with reading this. What’s more, finding a new j...

Studies show we should cancel Christmas

Dreaming of a white Christmas, are you? Buying presents for loved ones, eh? Office Christmas party? Wrote a letter to Santa that ended with the words “and a surprise”? Anticipation building with every Christmas card you write? It might be time to think again. Most coverage of the mid-winter festival is overly emotional and sentimental while assumptions relating to positive effects are not supported by evidence. Studies have shown, in fact, that w...

Economist, Data Scientist, Data Miner, Statistician or all of the above?

It was not so long ago that Steve Lohr quoted economist Hal Varian, Chief Economist at Google at the time, as saying “ that the sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians.” Lohr spoke of a “new breed of statisticians (…) that use powerful computers and sophisticated mathematical models to hunt for meaningful patterns and insights in vast troves of data. The applications are as diverse as improving Internet search and online advertising, ...

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