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Job Title: Professor Of Economics
Type of Company: I work at a private small liberal arts college.
Education: Ph.d. Economics
Previous Experience: I taught part time as a graduate student.
Job Tasks: I have three responsibilities in my job. First, I teach classes in economics. One of my principle fields are macroeconomics, how the ups and downs of the overall economy affect people's jobs prospects and their incomes and their ability to support their families. Another course I teach is called Public Finance that is about the role of government in the economy. In that course I teach about tax policy, how to manage the environment and what to do about global warming, and other government spending programs such as Social Security that supports retired workers.
In addition to teaching I conduct research and write about economic issues. I have lately being doing work on sweatshops -- factories with oppressive working conditions -- in the United States and in the export factories of developing countries such as China and Mexico. In those factories workers get paid very little, often less than $2 a day, and work long hours (typically 60 to 70 hours a week) and often every day of the week. They make clothes, athletic shoes, and toys that we buy in the United States and do that under dangerous conditions that make them sick, cost them limbs, or their lives in tragic factory fires. Part of my work is to figure out what we as the consumers of the products of their labor can do to improve the living and working conditions of these workers.
Best and Worst Parts of the Job: I love to teach and help people learn. I care passionately about what we can do to make our economy fairer and I love writing about that.
I don't like that my job never seems to be over and it takes too much time away from spending time with my family or just riding my bicycle. I also don't like that even though we, the faculty and the staff, do the work at the college, we don't set the policies and we are always ones called on to sacrifice in hard times like today.
Job Tips: The best thing is to go into this work if you really care about economic issues. To be an economist you will need to go to graduate school. To do that you need a good record and to develop your mathematical and writing skills. You will need to take upper level math and practice writing every chance you get. That is hard work but it pays off.
Additional Thoughts: I have a good job. It pays ok. But I love the work. I get to design my own courses and have a good bit of control over what I do day to day at work. And while I have too much work to do, my schedule is flexible. I hope you can find a job you find satisfying and at which you get to make many of the decisions about how you spend your time and what you do day to day on the job.
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