Job market perspectives

Both tracks have a clear focus on employment in policy research jobs in business and government organizations. From surveys among graduates of the IES program we know that about 60 percent of all graduates start their career in such jobs. A further 15 percent works in academic research and 15 percent in the financial sector; the remaining 10 percent in miscellaneous jobs. Graduates have been asked to indicate what is important in their job.  The top 3 job aspects more important to IES-graduates than to others are: (i) expertise in economics (on average 0.71 higher on a 5-point scale), (ii) knowing how to apply theory in practice (+0.52), and (iii) ability to work independently (+0.47). Students seem to be satisfied with economic knowledge, but lack knowledge of how to apply theory and the ability to work more independently. At the question whether students learned these aspects at the university IES-students responded with on average 4.67 (5-point scale) for economics, 3.86 for knowing how to translate theory into practice and 3.14 for working independently.  Our proposal aims to improve on these aspects.     

Finally, note that the EEP programme does not only or necessarily educate students for a job at the EU. Multinational firms, consultancy organizations, governments and economics departments of large banks all need students with a sound economic background that can assess economic developments in Europe and relate these to strategy issues.

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