Good Prospects for Econometrics Grad. Students?

Hat-tip to Ben Atkinson for drawing my attention to the fact that in The Chronicle of Higher Education on 17 December, Sara Hebel had a piece titled, "Academic Job Openings for Economists Grew Again This Year".

Here's what she had to say:

"New job openings for economists increased by 2.7 percent this year over last year, according to the American Economic Association. The increase followed two years of growth that returned the annual number of new jobs to prerecession levels.

An increase in the number of academic jobs fueled this year's growth, with listings for those positions increasing by 5.7 percent, to a total of 2,059 in 2012. At the same time, the number of nonacademic jobs listed fell by 3.6 percent, to 856. Academic institutions continued to be the most-common employer, representing more than two-thirds of the employers listing job openings, according to the association, which based its tallies on its Job Openings for Economists Web page.

The number of new jobs listed for economists has greatly exceeded the number of new Ph.D.'s produced in the field in the United States over the past decade and more, the association said. In 2011, the most recent year for which data were available in both categories, 1,018 new Ph.D.'s were awarded in economics and 2,842 new jobs were listed for economists, according to the association. Annual data the association cited, going back to 2001, showed that in each year there were at least twice as many new jobs as new Ph.D.'s.

Mathematical and quantitative methods was the top field of specialization in the 2012 job listings, the association said, followed by microeconomics and then international economics."

The emphasis in the last sentence above is mine [DG].

Some evidence that speaks favourably to relatively good job prospects for graduate students with a specialization in econometrics, can be found at EconJobMarket.org. Their job-market statistics indicate that in the past 6 months, once the "Any Field" category is excluded, the number of jobs posted there in "Econometrics" was exceeded only by the number in "Macroeconomics; Monetrary". When all jobs posted on that site since its inception are considered, "Econometrics" is the top field in terms of numbers of jobs (again, if the "Any Field" category is excluded).

Of course, there are two sides to the job market! When the AEA tells us that there were twice as many new jobs as there were new Ph.D.s (in the USA), this wouldn't be very encouraging if there is a bad mis-match with respect to fields of specialization.

Digging a little deeper into the job-market statistics for the last six months reveals the following selected ratios of Job Candidates, by primary field of specialization, to Advertised Jobs:

Econometrics (14.2); Macroeconomics, Monetary (18.0); Microeconomics (16.5); Industrial Organization (14.4); Development, Growth (21.4); Public Economics (9.4); Theory (18.2) International Trade (15.3); Operations Research (3.9); Finance (35.8).

The average ratio for all of the fields identified in the job-market statistics is 14.8. (This is after "Health Management" and "No Field" are excluded because there were no jobs advertised in in these two categories in the past six months.)

So,the ratio of Candidates/Jobs for Econometrics is very close to the average.

© 2012, David E. Giles