Economist (Government) Job Description

An Economist (Government) works for a public agency and turns economic data and theory into answers that officials can act on. The question might be what a proposed rule will cost the industries it touches, how many jobs a state lost last quarter, what next year's sales tax receipts will look like, or whether a merger review needs a closer look. The output is rarely a journal article. It is a memo, a regulatory analysis, a forecast table, a briefing slide or a data release that someone with authority will read before a deadline.

The work splits along the kind of office that employs the economist.

Regulatory agencies. Economists at departments such as Labor, Transportation, Agriculture or the Environmental Protection Agency write the regulatory impact analyses that Executive Order 12866 requires for economically significant rules. They define a baseline, estimate costs and benefits for the rule and its alternatives, discount future effects and document uncertainty, following OMB's Circular A-4 guidance on regulatory analysis.

Statistical agencies. At the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Census Bureau, economists build and maintain the official numbers: price indexes, payroll and wage estimates, the national accounts. The job is methodology, data review and explanation, with fixed release calendars and very little tolerance for error.

Budget, revenue and legislative offices. At the Congressional Budget Office, state revenue departments and legislative fiscal offices, economists project tax receipts, score the cost of bills and build the macroeconomic assumptions that budgets sit on.

State and local agencies. State labor market information units publish local employment and wage data, utility commissions weigh rate cases, and city or county economists study housing, tourism and the local tax base.

Across those settings the toolkit is consistent. Economists clean and merge large administrative and survey files, run regressions and forecasting models in Stata, R, SAS or Python, and check results against published series from BLS, BEA and Census. Much of the job is translation: a deputy secretary, a budget committee or a city council needs the finding and its limits in plain language, often in two pages. Government economists also answer data requests from lawyers, program staff and the press, and their numbers can be challenged in public comment, in litigation or before a legislative committee, so documentation and reproducible code matter as much as the result.

The role differs from a university economist's in pace and audience. Questions arrive from policy calendars rather than research agendas, and the economist rarely chooses the topic. It differs from a budget analyst's role in method: the economist is expected to model behavior and causal effects, not only to track appropriations and spending.

Federal hiring for economists runs through the Office of Personnel Management's qualification standard for the Economist Series, 0110. The basic requirement is a degree in economics that included at least 21 semester hours in economics and 3 semester hours in statistics, accounting or calculus, or an equivalent combination of coursework and experience. OPM lists individual economic research assignments, from planning through report preparation, among the examples of qualifying experience. Applicants with a business or public policy degree should count their economics credits against that floor before applying.

As a rough guide, the education ladder looks like this:

• Bachelor's degree in economics. Enough for some entry-level government positions. BLS notes that some economists, primarily in government, qualify for entry-level positions with a bachelor's degree.
• Master's degree. A common credential for applied policy and regulatory work, and a typical route to higher grades without years of prior experience.
• Ph.D. Often sought for research-heavy offices and senior methodology roles.

Coursework that pays off on the job: intermediate microeconomics and macroeconomics, econometrics, cost-benefit analysis, public finance, labor or environmental economics, and survey methods. Programming matters as much as theory. A candidate who can write clean, documented code in Stata, R or Python and explain a regression to a non-economist will be useful in the first month.

Experience paths into the role vary. Typical entry points include research assistant jobs at a statistical agency or a policy research organization, internships with a congressional office or state legislative fiscal office, Pathways and other student programs in the federal government, and two or three years as an analyst at an economic consulting firm. As a rough guide, three to five years of applied analysis prepares an economist to lead a regulatory impact analysis or a revenue forecast on one's own.

Writing matters as much as modeling. The job calls for economists who can produce a two-page memo with one clear conclusion, a methods appendix that a reviewer at OMB or a court can follow, and a table that a budget committee can read without a briefing. Bring a writing sample to the process, ideally a policy analysis rather than a term paper.

No license or certification is required to work as a government economist. Federal positions may require a background investigation, and some posts at defense, intelligence or trade agencies require a security clearance. State and local agencies set their own classification standards.

BLS counts about 18,600 economist jobs in 2025 and projects employment to grow 5 percent from 2025 to 2035, which it classifies as faster than the average for all occupations. That works out to about 1,100 openings a year on average, with many expected to come from replacing economists who move to other occupations or retire. Among the largest employers of economists, the Occupational Outlook Handbook lists the federal government, excluding the postal service, at 26 percent of jobs, state government at 14 percent and local government at 9 percent. Those projections describe the occupation as a whole, not government posts alone.

The federal side has been through a hard stretch. The American Statistical Association reported on July 28, 2026 that all 13 federal statistical agencies have experienced staffing reductions since January 2025, that six agencies have lost at least one-third of their workforce, and that two have lost more than two-thirds. Hiring has resumed at many agencies, but the association describes it as limited to a handful of positions at most, and it noted that the administration's FY27 budget request again proposes substantial reductions for most statistical agencies. Data production also took a hit from the lapse in appropriations that ran from Oct. 1 through Nov. 12, 2025, when BLS suspended most Consumer Price Index operations, including data collection.

Regulatory economics changed in a different way. Executive Order 14192, signed Jan. 31, 2025, directed OMB to revoke the November 2023 revision of Circular A-4. OMB did so in memo M-25-15 on Feb. 12, 2025 and reinstated the September 2003 version as the governing guidance for regulatory analysis. That memo sent agencies back to the older document for their regulatory impact analyses.

Artificial intelligence enters the job on two fronts. As a subject, it is now part of what statistical agencies measure: in a June 15, 2026 blog post, BEA Director Vipin Arora described three aspects of measuring AI that statistical agencies are working on, including estimating AI's impact on workers, productivity and the economy, and understanding where, how and how much AI is used. As a tool, Arora noted that AI is also being used inside statistical organizations themselves. BLS, for its part, names new tools such as artificial intelligence in its 2026-30 strategic plan among the changes its statistics must keep pace with.

Where does that leave a job seeker in late 2026? State and local governments, legislative fiscal offices and congressional support agencies hire on their own budgets and calendars, separate from executive-branch departments. Federal applicants should set alerts on USAJOBS and apply soon after a posting opens, with a resume that maps coursework and projects to the 0110 requirements. Programming skill, a record of clear policy writing and comfort with administrative data also carry over to economic consulting and research organizations if public hiring stays tight.

Dear Hiring Committee,

I am applying for the Economist position in the Office of Economic Analysis at the State Department of Revenue. I earned an M.A. in applied economics at Midland State University, and for the past four years I have worked as a research analyst at Carver Policy Associates, where I build revenue and employment models for state and municipal clients.

My work often starts with a messy question and an imperfect file. Last year a county finance office asked how a proposed change to its lodging tax would affect collections over the next three fiscal years. I merged eight years of monthly tax returns with hotel occupancy data, estimated a demand model in Stata, and wrote a six-page memo with a base case and two alternative scenarios. The county adopted the base case as its planning number, and the actual first-year collections landed inside the range I published.

I also maintain the firm's quarterly sales tax forecast for three mid-sized cities. Each forecast goes out with a short narrative, a table of assumptions and the code, so that the client's staff can rerun the model when I am not in the room. I have learned that a forecast nobody understands will not be used, so I write for the budget director first and the economist second.

Your office's work on fiscal notes for proposed legislation is exactly the kind of analysis I want to do full time. I would bring careful documentation, fast turnaround when the legislature is in session, and the patience to explain an elasticity to a committee member who has five minutes.

Thank you for your consideration. I would welcome the chance to discuss the position.

Sincerely, Jordan Ellison