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Careers with the Government Economic Service

ended 16. December 2025

Many of you regularly slam the government for its failure to understand even the basics of economics. Well now it seems you can join the Government Economic Service and put that right, as the government has today announced it is recruiting economists. What are your thoughts on all of this? And will you be applying? 

5 responses from the Newspage community

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Kate Underwood
Founder & Chief People Strategist at Kate Underwood HR and Training
Maybe I should apply… because watching this lot “do economics” is like watching someone butter toast with a spanner. If I were a grad or a student, I’d be straight in. Brilliant opportunity. But I’m not. And I’m looking at this thinking: where are the experienced people who can spot the flaws before they smack into real life? Because real life is messy. People are cutting back. Businesses are stripping costs. Wages, prices, confidence… you can feel it day to day. That doesn’t always show up neatly in a model. The uncomfortable truth is the pipeline won’t fix today. Apprentices and graduates take years to become properly battle-ready, so who’s coaching, challenging and sense-checking right now? Government should be smarter: bring in near-retirement economists who don’t want full-time, but have decades of judgment. Use them flexibly to mentor juniors and improve decisions while the pipeline catches up. So maybe I should apply and help to shape the future.
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Scott Gallacher
Director at Rowley Turton
The issue with government policy isn’t necessarily a lack of economists – it’s more often the way economic advice is received, used or even rejected outright by politicians. We’ve repeatedly heard economists dismissed when their analysis is inconvenient; Michael Gove’s ‘we’ve had enough of experts’ comment still looms large.

A strong, well-resourced Government Economic Service is essential if government policy is to be grounded in evidence rather than ideology. And, as a parent of someone who has just graduated with an Economics degree, I wish we had heard of the Government Economic Service Degree Level Apprenticeship Programme. An excellent route for aspiring economists – gaining a degree while avoiding hefty tuition fees and student debt is a genuinely positive development.
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Kundan Bhaduri
Entrepreneur, Investor and Landlord at The Kushman Group
This would all be fun and games, and I would have loved to join the policy committee myself. If only there was any evidence that economic expertise influences policy decisions at Westminster these days.

Ministers routinely ignore Treasury analysis when it conflicts with electoral messaging, they dismiss inconvenient forecasts as "project fear," and most treat economics as a flexible discipline that bends to political necessity.

The real challenge is not a shortage of economists but a surplus of politicians who confuse wishful thinking with economic policy and treat mathematical models like horoscopes that can be reinterpreted until they say what you want.
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Colette Mason
AI Ethics Consultant at Clever Clogs AI
The Government is recruiting hundreds of new economists to "influence policy and shape responses to essential economic issues", but they're training them on frameworks that can't account for the technology currently dismantling every productivity assumption we have.

How can you model economic impacts when AI is making traditional productivity metrics obsolete? When a single person with the right AI setup can now deliver output that previously required a team of five? When "efficiency gains" no longer follow historical patterns because the tools learn and compound?

We're recruiting brilliant minds to analyse an economy they fundamentally can't see properly, because their training treats AI as just another variable in the spreadsheet, not as the thing rewriting the spreadsheet itself.

Schmoozing up to big US tech giants muddies the waters further. We need home-grown AI talent to shape the UK economy and brains who understand how this tech changes everything, not model our collapse.
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Patricia McGirr
Founder at Repossession Rescue Network
Maybe the Government should stop looking for economists and start employing people with business and life experience. Behind every spreadsheet, graph and balance sheet is a story of real-world impact, consequences that rarely make headlines and opportunities missed. Academic credentials are not the only thing we need to understand or plan economic recovery. It’s time we reality-check and fact check economic assumptions before they become policy to prevent more knee-jerk decisions from Whitehall. Or maybe career politicians should actually listen to those best placed to enact changes that would make a difference.