Assistant Economist

Assistant Economist

• Salary: National: £34,820 - £40,000. If the successful candidate is a current Civil Servant joining on level transfer, HM Treasury will honour their current substantive salary if higher.
• Working Pattern: This post is available on a full time, part time or job share basis, and flexible working hours can be accommodated.
• Location: Darlington (Feethams House)

We are recruiting an Assistant Economist to join the Personal Tax, Welfare and Pensions team. This is an exciting role with analysis having a direct impact on policy work.

About the Team

The Labour Markets and Distributional Analysis team is a friendly team of outstanding analysts and policy makers. We seek to bring together an understanding of households’ living standards and position in the labour market, with key labour market policies, such as DWP’s unemployment regime and tax-free childcare.

Our part of the team is made up of around 5 economists who work closely with policy teams across HM Treasury to provide analytical support on the impacts of policies on the labour market. We lead on microeconomic analysis of earnings, and employment, as well as analysis of work incentives in the tax and welfare system, and National Living and Minimum Wage analysis. We support decision making surrounding minimum wage policy by estimating the impact of policy changes on the economy. We make assessments of Artificial Intelligence’s current impacts on the labour market and work with departments across Whitehall to understand the potential future impacts. We estimate the impact of employment support programmes to support policy making, for example on recent youth employment packages.

About the Job

The key responsibilities of the post-holder will be:

1. Delivering analysis to support the annual uprating decision of the National Living Wage and National Minimum Wage and leading on the modelling to support policy decisions. You will provide advice and briefings to HM Treasury senior officials and ministers.
2. Working with analytical, policy and strategy colleagues in teams across HM Treasury and other government departments, such as the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), to deliver key government objectives including reducing youth unemployment and delivering a genuine living wage. For example, producing analysis of employment support schemes, estimating their employment impact to aid DWP and HMT policy colleagues’ decisions.
3. Helping to build and communicate HM Treasury’s understanding of the wider evidence on labour markets, including the effect of artificial intelligence. You will be encouraged to develop and maintain a strong grasp of the external debate, engaging with leading figures from academia and the think-tank community.
4. Conducting microeconomic analysis to identify policy problems and solutions. We use data sources such as the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings and the Labour Force Survey to model the impact of policies on, for example, employment.
5. Presenting your analytical conclusions, clearly and succinctly, to a variety of technical and non-technical audiences.

About You

We are wanting you to have the ability to conduct high-quality economic analysis to produce actionable conclusions and be able to look at complex information, weigh up different options and clearly explain your recommendations. You will be able to communicate effectively with senior leaders and break down complicated information to an non-technical audience. We also want you to build good relationships with colleagues across multiple teams

Some of the Benefits our people love!

• 25 days annual leave (rising to 30 after 5 years), plus 8 public holidays and the King’s birthday (unless you have a legacy arrangement as an existing Civil Servant). Additionally, we operate flexitime systems, allowing employees to take up to an additional 2 days off each month
• Flexible working patterns (part-time, job-share, condensed hours)
• Generous parental and adoption leave packages
• Access to a generous Defined Benefit pension scheme with employer contributions of 28%
• Access to a cycle-to-work salary sacrifice scheme and season ticket advances
• A range of active staff networks, based around interests (e.g. analysts, music society, sports and social club) and diversity

For more information about the role and how to apply, please follow the apply link.