United States
CHF 120kUS mid–senior typical from this profession's market ladder/regions, 2023–24 bands.
Work–life
50
Client and close cycles spike hours; baseline culture differs by firm.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Resists AI62
Pay74
Barrier to entry78
Autonomy64
Demand68
Impact85
LessMore
Last reviewed Sources & creditsMedia creditsMethodology
Quick answers
What does an economist actually do all day?
Three broad tracks share the title: academics who research and teach, policy economists at central banks, ministries and bodies like the IMF, and private-sector economists at banks, consultancies and tech firms. The daily work is similar everywhere — cleaning data, estimating models, writing, and explaining the results to people who must act on them.
Do you need a PhD to be an economist?
Not legally — the title is unprotected everywhere. In practice, research roles at universities, central banks and international institutions are close to PhD-only, while ministries, commercial banks and consultancies hire at master's level, and the UK's Government Economic Service recruits straight from a bachelor's degree. The PhD is a union card for the research track, not the profession.
How much do economists earn?
The US median was about $115,000 in 2023 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with Federal Reserve and IMF economists above it and chief economists at major banks earning $500,000 or more. Pay is far lower in nominal terms elsewhere: a government economist in India or Brazil earns a small fraction of US figures for identical work.
Is there really a Nobel Prize in economics?
Strictly, no — it is the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, endowed by Sweden's central bank in 1968 and first awarded in 1969, sixty-eight years after the original prizes. It is presented at the same Stockholm ceremony with the same prize money, which is why almost everyone, including economists, just says Nobel.
Why did economists fail to predict the 2008 crisis?
When Queen Elizabeth II visited the London School of Economics in November 2008 she asked exactly that. The British Academy's written answer blamed "a failure of the collective imagination of many bright people": standard macroeconomic models simply left the financial system out. The episode forced banking and credit back into mainstream models, a rebuild still under way.
What is the difference between an economist and a financial analyst?
A financial analyst values specific companies and securities to guide investment decisions, typically credentialed through the CFA program. An economist studies how whole systems behave — inflation, employment, trade, poverty — and asks causal questions about them. The training differs accordingly: analysts learn accounting and valuation, economists learn econometrics and modelling, usually through a master's or PhD.
Economist pay is stage-heavy and track-heavy. The pipeline runs on funded austerity — five or six PhD years at a $30,000–$45,000 stipend (US, 2024) — before splitting into tracks whose pay diverges enormously: academia and government pay solidly, financial-sector and technology roles pay multiples of them, and the handful of bank chief economists and star consultants sit near investment-banking levels.
Geography compounds the gap. The same IMF-trained skill set earns perhaps eight times as much, in nominal terms, in Zurich or New York as in Delhi or São Paulo, which is why the profession's talent flows so persistently toward Washington, London and the tech coasts — and why central banks in middle-income countries struggle to keep the economists they train.
The pay ladder
PhD student1Entry researcher2Assistant professor3Senior economist4Chief economist / star5
PhD student
US doctoral stipend with tuition waived, typical funded program, 2024; European stipends are broadly comparable in purchasing power.
Entry researcher
US, new PhD economists at the Federal Reserve Board and comparable institutions, 2024 postings; IMF entry packages are similar and partly tax-exempt.
Assistant professor
US research universities, nine-month salaries for new economics faculty at strong departments, 2024; tech-sector economist offers at the same career stage often exceed this.
Senior economist
US, tenured professors with consulting, senior Fed/IMF staff and bank director-level economists, mid-2020s; a band, not a point — outside the US the equivalent rank pays far less.
Chief economist / star
US, chief economists at major banks and star academics with expert-witness or advisory practices, 2024–25; the very top of the market runs well beyond this.
Pay and life by country
Typical mid-to-senior packages, hours and leave — not entry stipends. Figures are rounded bands with a year and market in the notes.
South Korea
local mid–senior bandKorea mid–senior typical drawn from regional notes on Economist where available, 2023–24.
Work–life
45
Client and close cycles spike hours; baseline culture differs by firm.
Japan
local mid–senior bandJapan mid–senior typical drawn from regional notes on Economist where available, 2023–24.
Work–life
52
Client and close cycles spike hours; baseline culture differs by firm.
Germany
€70kGermany mid–senior typical drawn from regional notes on Economist where available, 2024.
Work–life
62
Client and close cycles spike hours; baseline culture differs by firm.
United Kingdom
£55kUK mid–senior typical drawn from regional notes on Economist where available, 2024–25.
Work–life
55
Client and close cycles spike hours; baseline culture differs by firm.
Singapore
S$100kSingapore mid–senior typical drawn from regional notes on Economist where available, 2023–24.
Work–life
52
Client and close cycles spike hours; baseline culture differs by firm.
What it pays around the world
SwitzerlandCHF 120k
United States$115k
SingaporeS$100k
Germany€70k
United Kingdom£55k
India₹12L
Switzerland
Typical experienced economist in Zurich banking, pharma and the SNB orbit, 2024; the highest broad salary level for the profession outside specialized US roles.
United States
Median annual wage for economists, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2023; financial-sector and Washington policy roles cluster well above the median.
Singapore
Mid-career economists at MAS, banks and consultancies, mid-2020s; the region's hub premium over neighboring markets is substantial.
Germany
Experienced economists in ministries, associations and banks, 2024 salary surveys; Bundesbank and ECB roles in Frankfurt pay above the national norm.
United Kingdom
Government Economic Service and Bank of England economist grades, London, 2024–25; City of London bank economists earn a large multiple of the public scale.
India
RBI and Indian Economic Service officer grades, mid-2020s, in the low-to-mid lakhs per year; private-sector and international-institution roles pay several times the government scale.
Key numbers
Economists employed in the US
Projected US growth, 2023–33
Women among new US econ PhDs
PhD economists at Amazon
Who employs them
Federal Reserve System
The US central bank's board and twelve regional banks together employ one of the largest concentrations of PhD economists anywhere, spanning monetary policy, supervision and a research output rivaling top universities.
International Monetary Fund
Washington-based lender of last resort to governments, whose country missions and World Economic Outlook are staffed by roughly a thousand economists drawn from most of its member countries.
World Bank
The largest development institution, employing economists across country offices and research departments; its chief economist post — held by Stiglitz, Krueger and Justin Yifu Lin among others — is one of the profession's most visible chairs.
European Central Bank
Frankfurt's monetary authority for the euro area, hiring economists from all member states through competitive graduate and traineeship programs that have become continental Europe's standard entry route into central banking.
Reserve Bank of India
Mumbai-based central bank of the world's most populous country, recruiting economists through its own national examinations into a research and policy cadre with unusual influence over a fast-growing economy.
Amazon
The technology sector's flagship economics employer, reported by 2019 to have more than 150 PhD economists working on pricing, forecasting and marketplace design — emblematic of tech's rise as the field's fastest-growing destination.
Where the demand is going
Baseline demand is steady rather than spectacular: the US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects about 5 percent growth for economists over 2023–33, a little above the all-occupation average, on a small base of roughly 35,000 jobs. The profession's real demand story is compositional — policy institutions hire steadily, while technology firms, climate-related roles and data-intensive finance have grown from nearly nothing into major destinations within fifteen years.
The academic market, by contrast, is structurally oversubscribed: universities produce far more economics PhDs than tenure-track openings, and each year a larger share of strong graduates goes directly to central banks, tech companies and consultancies. Unusually among academic disciplines, these outside options pay as well as or better than professorships, which keeps the doctorate valuable even as faculty careers get scarcer.
Demand is most cyclical exactly where the work is most public: bank and consultancy economists are hired in booms and cut in busts, while government and central-bank economists enjoy civil-service stability. Crises cut both ways — they trim private research desks while sharply raising what the surviving, trusted forecasters and the policy institutions that employ economists are asked to do.
Similar professions
Closest neighbours on the six-score profile — not the same field only.
👔
Lawyer
Advises clients, drafts the documents that bind them, and argues their case when it reaches court — carrying personal legal liability if the advice is wrong.
AI-resistant 58 💊Pharmacist
The medicines expert behind every prescription — from Baghdad's first drug shops and the apothecary's mortar to morphine, artemisinin and the modern dispensary.
AI-resistant 58 🛰️Aerospace Engineer
Designs, analyzes and certifies the aircraft, rockets and spacecraft that leave the ground, working to safety margins that leave no room for guessing.
AI-resistant 74 🧫Clinical Data Scientist
Uses clinical, trial and health-system data to generate reliable evidence for safer care, research and operational decisions.
AI-resistant 68 🦾Robotics Engineer
Designs the machines that sense, decide and act in the physical world, where the hard problem was never intelligence but the world itself.
AI-resistant 65 🌿Sustainability Manager
Leads the strategy, measurement and reporting that helps organizations reduce environmental and social harm while meeting business obligations.
AI-resistant 66Continue exploring
Keep exploring
More in Business & Finance
🚀
Entrepreneur
The person who starts the company — spotting the gap, bearing the risk and answering for payroll, from Assyrian caravan financiers to venture-backed founders.
AI-resistant 88 💹Investment Banker
The dealmaker who prices companies and moves capital — a trade running from Medici Florence to today's pitch decks, paid for trust when billions change hands.
AI-resistant 42 🧾Accountant
The keeper of the books: heir to a craft so old it invented writing itself, now negotiating with the software built to automate it.
AI-resistant 35 📣Marketer
The professional who creates demand — from Pompeii's painted walls and P&G's 1931 brand-man memo to the auction-driven feeds of the digital era.
AI-resistant 38 🗺️Product Manager
Decides what a company should build next, and why — turning customer needs, business goals and engineering limits into one shared plan nobody else fully owns.
AI-resistant 50 🌿Sustainability Manager
Leads the strategy, measurement and reporting that helps organizations reduce environmental and social harm while meeting business obligations.
AI-resistant 66