---
title: "What can you do with an economics degree?"
description: "15 careers economics graduates commonly move into, with BLS median pay, projected growth and entry requirements for each."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/majors/economics"
last-updated: "2026-08-23T07:20:09.337Z"
---

# What can you do with an economics degree?

**What the degree involves:** Micro and macro theory, econometrics, and modelling with real data sets.

Economics is far more quantitative than its reputation suggests, and almost none of its graduates become economists — that title is a doctoral destination. What the degree reliably buys is entry to the analyst roles across finance, consulting, government and market research, and the econometrics classes are what make that entry real.

15 common destinations, ordered most common first rather than highest paid first. 3 of 15 have a master's or a doctoral or professional degree as their BLS typical entry education, and 14 of 15 are projected to grow. A major is a body of study, not a job assignment: these are destinations of people who took the degree, not what the degree entitles anyone to.

| # | Occupation | Median annual wage | Projected change | Openings a year | Typical entry education |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | [Financial and Investment Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/financial-and-investment-analyst) | $102,740 | +5.7% | 25,100 | Bachelor's |
| 2 | [Market Research Analyst and Marketing Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/market-research-analyst-and-marketing-specialist) | $78,760 | +6.7% | 87,200 | Bachelor's |
| 3 | [Management Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/management-analyst) | $101,860 | +8.8% | 98,100 | Bachelor's |
| 4 | Budget Analyst | $91,640 | +1.0% | 3,100 | Bachelor's |
| 5 | Credit Analyst | $83,510 | -4.4% | 3,700 | Bachelor's |
| 6 | [Business Intelligence Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/business-intelligence-analyst) | $120,230 | +33.5% | 23,400 | Bachelor's |
| 7 | Operations Research Analyst | $88,940 | +21.5% | 9,600 | Bachelor's |
| 8 | [Financial Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/financial-manager) | $166,570 | +14.8% | 74,600 | Bachelor's |
| 9 | [Data Scientist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/data-scientist) | $120,230 | +33.5% | 23,400 | Bachelor's |
| 10 | Statistician | $105,650 | +8.5% | 2,000 | Master's (graduate study) |
| 11 | Financial Quantitative Analyst | $81,100 | +3.1% | 10,300 | Bachelor's |
| 12 | Financial Risk Specialist | $117,330 | +6.5% | 4,800 | Bachelor's |
| 13 | Actuary | $130,000 | +21.8% | 2,400 | Bachelor's |
| 14 | Economist | $124,720 | +1.2% | 900 | Master's (graduate study) |
| 15 | Economics Teacher, Postsecondary | $123,920 | +2.1% | 1,200 | Doctorate (graduate study) |

Wages are BLS OEWS, May 2025. Projected change, annual openings and typical entry education are BLS Employment Projections. Occupation descriptions are O\*NET. Nothing on this page is estimated and no figure is generated by an AI model.

Full record for any row, including wage percentiles and state-level pay: https://nuecareer.com/careers/{slug} or https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/{slug}. Other majors: https://nuecareer.com/careers/majors

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 30.3 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology