A.E
March 5, 2011, 6:17pm
17
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dadx3:
More salary info for those interested in economic forecasting:</p>
<p>The National Association for Business Economics (NABE) has done a salary survey every 2 years for at least the last 30 years. Its most recent survey, for 2010, has good data on salaries for professional business economists. I would expect that a large number, probably the majority, of economists employed by large corporations as economic forecasters are members of NABE.</p>
<p>For a starting salary, the median survey response was $58k, typically for someone with a MA in economics. The median salary for someone with 0-1 years of experience was reported as $67,500. The median salary of all survey respondents was $120k, with a median length of experience of 20 years.</p>
<p>NABE also has a jobs site. In the past 3 months there have been 9 listings for economist jobs with large corporations. Many of these require an advanced degree.</p>
<p>I would not want to unnecessarily discourage anyone from majoring in economics. I have thorougly enjoyed my career so far as a professional economist. But it is just not true that there is “a very high demand by large corporations and companies for economics majors and more so for economic graduate students because the companies require them to do economic forecasting” as thebull stated in post #13 .
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<p>I don’t think this has much to do with why people view an economics degree as a vehicle to a job with a good salary. I think places like investment banks or professional services firms are very open to hiring people with economics degrees. Those are the places where you can land a good salary early and, if you put your head down and work 100 hours a week for a few years, you can end up with a great salary.</p>