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The lastest stories and analysis on the Economist job market

What Can You do With a Masters in Economics?

So, you’ve almost finished your master’s in economics – coursework handed in, library books returned, just a few final exams to breeze through… All you need to do now is confront that tricky little question you’ve been ignoring for the past year or so: what can you do with a master’s in economics? In short, what are your career prospects? What jobs can you apply for, which sectors should you be searching within, and which employers are likely to ...

How opinion polls create the future

Imagine Hugh Grant and Seán Connery are in the same class at school. They have a maths exam in six weeks and whoever gets the higher mark wins a gold star. At the end of the first week, they have a wee class test on which Hugh scores 50 and Seán 28; Hugh spends the next couple of weeks wearing a smug, self-satisfied grin and wondering whom he’ll invite to the Hunt Ball while Seán kicks stones up and down the lane swearing under his breath. In wee...

The perfect do-you-have-any-questions question

“I thought you were going to go that way,” says your passenger as you speed past the motorway exit marked The Way You Really Should Have Gone. “Did you not know about the ten-mile tail-backs causing four-hour delays?” Clearly, you did not know but if you had you might have done things somewhat differently. Time to resign yourself to a long wait for the next exit, wondering about what might have been. That’s your feedback from the HR manager when ...

The Perils of Economic Forecasting

Imagine the most delicious meal you could ever eat. For starters, it’s Kalamata olive tapenade on garlic ciabatta or mussels roasted in lemon juice and coriander. Then it’s rack of lamb on a bed of puréed sweet potatoes or pan-fried Aberdeen Angus steak or saffron rice with marinated lobster and a fizzy cola-bottle garnish. Yes, sweets are delicious but they’re totally out of place on a dinner plate. This is not an ad for a grocery shop. This is ...

The dangers of accepting a counter offer.

"They'll be sorry when I leave!" All too often, employers do seem sorry - suddenly offering the kind of salary, promotion or opportunity for recognition that they had refused to grant before. Of course they're sorry. You're about to leave on your timing, not theirs. There is probably work to be done, which they were counting on you to complete. You have just fired your boss, when he or she would prefer to have the right to fire you. You have crea...

Efficiency

Lionel Messi is one of the best footballer players ever. He’s an outlier in the number of goals he has scored (a record 91 in 2012), the rate at which he scores (1.35 goals per game for Barcelona in 2011-2012, which is a lot), and the number of times he has been voted the best player in the world (every year from 2009 to 2012; all that good stuff is from Wikipedia, by the way). However, he is also an outlier in how little effort he seems to make....

In the madding crowd at a careers fair

Bathsheba Everdene and Gabriel Oak would feel right at home visiting a careers fair. They spend their time tending their sheep then bring them to market and seek a buyer. They’ll be hoping to get a good price but rumour has it that there are lots of people in sheep at the moment. If only they’d picked goats. Everyone’s buying goats these days, so some people are even shaving their sheep, putting on horned hairbands and attaching little fake beard...

Someone to watch over me: FIFA’s lesson in supervision

FIFA is in the middle of a bit of a crisis at the moment. The president has resigned, seven senior officials are being investigated by the FBI after one entered a plea bargain, and a former vice-president accused FIFA of interfering in the Trinidadian and Tobagonian general election in 2010. There are allegations of bribery dating back twenty years and millions of dollars in inducement, kick-backs, phantom grants, and un-repaid loans, all under t...

Liars, damned liars, and people who respond to opinion polls

“If this exit poll is right, I will publicly eat my hat on your programme,” said Paddy Ashdown on the BBC’s election night coverage. People on all sides struggled to believe the exit polls and came up with all sorts of explanations, until it turned out it was the opinion polls that got it wrong. There are several possibilities: people lied in all the polls before the exit poll or loads of people changed their minds once they had the pencils in th...

Making money grow on your post-graduation decision tree

Congratulations! You’ve just completed an undergraduate degree, and all those 9.00am lectures, 5.00pm deadlines, and 3.00am cups of tea as you crammed for the last exam are behind you and it’s time for the next step. (If you’re still in the middle of your exams, please re-read in a couple of weeks.) You’ll eventually want to find a job, and you’ve come to the right place, but unfortunately it might be necessary to get another degree first. Here a...

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