(yes, related to that Keynes -- I didn't believe it at first, but if it's on Wikipedia it's gotta be true!)
Economists are in troubleEconomists are in trouble
- Nobody cares for their expertise anymore
- American students are lukewarm on the major
- the job market for economists is cratering
The more I've thought about it, the better my choice to opt against pursuing a doctorate in economics. (It was close, and I could have been on a much narrower and more terrifying path.) I would have been a newly minted, job-hungry, debt-ridden economist roughly about now, and it's observations like this that make me feel like I dodged a bullet:
Third was the bleak labour market for newly minted PhD economists [...] Hiring freezes helped to halve the number of US full-time academic postings between 2019 and 2025.
some candidates had hoped that the job market would improve, and so prolonged their PhD or taken temporary positions. The bet has gone bad, building up a huge mass of applicants chasing not very many positions.
according to the most recent comparable data, since 2019 recruitment has shrivelled faster for economists than philosophers or linguists. Oof.
(though, in all fairness the absolute numbers there seem to matter... plus, economists have MUCH better job prospects in the private sector, I hear, than e.g., philosophers)
Here's a neat graph:
Also, LOL irony:
...and sure, blaming orange man for ills is what everyone else does, so why not.
It's a hot topic of discussion in my department. We've seen enrollment numbers tanking for the major but no one is exactly sure why.
My personal hypothesis is that the popularization of data science and business analytics as separate fields is eating at some of the previous population of students interested in econ
It's also a bit of a stale field at the frontier, if I'm being honest. At this point I'm pretty much only still in it because the switching costs are too high
One problem is that economists are prone to recommending other undergraduate majors to students because we're the ones who think about human capital development and optimal decision making.
If you're stopping at a bachelors degree, then econ probably isn't the best choice. Also, if you want to go to grad school in econ, an undergraduate degree in econ probably isn't the best choice. Womp womp.
Econ curricula at top universities tend to be pretty mathematically rigorous including heavy math, stat, and computer requirements
Maybe that's another explanation? The Econ profs got too ahead of their skis in terms of the technical requirements and forgot that most of the students aren't interested in that, and if they were they wouldn't be majoring in Econ.
The obvious answer is to just make econ a graduation requirement.
Heh, I sit on a university wide curriculum committee and the biggest fights are exactly over which courses all undergrads are gonna be required to take. You can imagine why
I don't have to imagine. I've been involved in those discussions as well.
Computer science is another head on the block, gradually then suddenly
And then we'll notice more tradesmen [tradespeople for the woke] until those jobs aren't needed
Each sector will have it's own reason for it's demise, economy is what we are constantly witnessing and writing about daily
CS is AI slop less sloppy
Trades is more people fleeing the once sound professional career
There isnt enough jobs to go around!
Have you ever been on an All inclusive holiday when the kids are at school? Lovely isn’t it, apart from a few stragglers who have taken the gamble to take their kids out and benefit from a cheap break, the restaurants all have plentiful seating, you can get a lounger by the pool, a drink 🍸 at the cocktail bar
But then your holiday runs in to the following week, when the kids are off school and you notice your little enclave get slightly busier everyday, you can't get your favorite seat at the dinner hall, the sun loungers are all taken by 3am!! the queues at the bar are ridiculous
This is the reality of the job market, for decades we've not been noticing the economy getting slightly worse and now AI is here it's exasperating the situation
We can see it getting worse in real time
The problem is, what do we tell our kids to do?
Every time I talk to an "economist" with any kind of a degree I give thanks to Eru Iluvatar that he spared me from such a dreadful fate. They don't know anything
ChatGPT, please tell what economics is? And worse things to come...