There are diverse career opportunities in the world of Economics. People typically first think of someone like Dawie Roodt, who regularly provides commentary in the media about the economy, but there are varied job opportunities.

People with an Economics background (it may not say Economist on their business card) work for large companies, in the financial world, and for the Reserve Bank and government departments like Treasury, SARS, and DTIC. The nature of the work is typically to read and write a lot, process data, and make presentations — and of course to constantly think like an economist!

Internationally, people with an economics background are also now being snapped up by high technology companies. Google’s chief economist, Hal Varian, is very well known. There are economist teams at OpenAI and Anthropic. There are two reasons for this:

• Economists are usually media-friendly and can serve as the “face” of the company and make presentations.
• Economists can work with data and perform statistical analysis. Data about what we all do on the internet streams into companies like Amazon and Uber, and economists help them think about how to convert clicks into advertising revenue, or sales.

Noah Smith has an old, but fun post that is required reading:

I wish that the economics profession would let loose its inner geek once in a while! Face it economists: you do math, stats, and coding for a living. It’s too late; you are a nerd. You are not a backslapping deal-making executive or a trash-talking caffeine-guzzling Goldman Sachs trader. You are a scientist of some sort, or at least you should be. Embrace it! 

In 2026, Gina Schoeman Ackerman (of CEEMEA Economics) is hosting “First Thursday” sessions online in which she digs into what economists actually do. Check out the videos on her website.