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The Complete Guide to Becoming An Economist
The real pay, the real path, and the real day-to-day work — everything you need to decide if this career is for you, before you spend a dime on tuition.
by Alumigogo Books
Chapter 1: What Does a Economist Actually Do?
Before you spend a single dollar on tuition or a single hour on an online econometrics course, you deserve to know what economists actually do when they're not being quoted in the news. The short answer is that they analyze data to answer questions about how the world works. The longer answer involves a lot more time cleaning messy spreadsheets than you might expect, and it involves less time debating grand theories than the popular image suggests.
Think of an economist as a professional detective for the economy. Businesses, governments, and nonprofit organizations all have big questions they need answered. Should we raise the price of this product? How many new teachers will a school district need in five years? Will a new highway reduce traffic congestion enough to justify its cost? These are not philosophical questions; they are practical ones that require careful analysis of numbers. An economist is the person who figures out how to answer those questions, finds the necessary data, analyzes it, and translates the results into plain language that non-experts can understand and act upon.
The Core of the Job: Data and Questions
The absolute core of an economist's day-to-day work is the pairing of a question with a dataset. You are rarely, if ever, given a simple problem with a clear path to a solution. Instead, you are given a messy, vague business or policy problem that needs to be translated into something you can measure.