Students interested in world issues can find jobs with the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and United Nations agencies. According to the 1998-99 Occupational Outlook Handbook , employment of economists is expected to grow about as fast as most occupations through the year 2006. Competition, the growing complexity of the global economy, and increased reliance on quantitative methods for analyzing the current value of future funds, business trends, sales, and purchasing should spur demand for economists. The growing need for economic analyses in virtually every industry should result in additional jobs for economists. Jobs for persons with a background in economics will be created to satisfy the continued need for economic analyses by lawyers, accountants, engineers, health service administrators, urban and regional planners, environmental scientists, among others.
Individuals earning economics degrees belong to one of the highest paid professions.
This exceeds those in the other Social Sciences, Business Administration, Advertising, Marketing, and Management. An undergraduate economics major is also an excellent preparation for a number of graduate school programs. Students who study economics are at an advantage over students of other disciplines when applying to law school since the economic reasoning is appearing frequently in the major law reviews, economic arguments and perspectives are often developed in the first-year law courses, and each of the major law schools has at least one economics Ph.D. on the faculty. In addition, an undergraduate economics degree combined with a law degree may lead to many lucrative and rewarding opportunities because of the overlapping legal and economic questions, and many law schools offer joint degrees in law and economics for which an undergraduate degree in economics is clearly the best preparation. Obviously, undergraduate studies in economics form the best foundation for a graduate degree in economics.