Careers and employability
You will leave Manchester with the skills and knowledge you need to take the next step to your chosen career path.
Typical career paths
Our graduates are highly sought after, you will be able to use your skills and knowledge in a wide range of different areas, such as:
- accountancy and actuarial science;
- finance and banking;
- management training;
- consultancy;
- government.
Inspiring Careers in Economics
Studying Economics at The University of Manchester means joining an inclusive and supportive community that helps students develop skills, confidence and professional networks alongside their academic studies.
Through partnerships with organisations such as the Royal Economic Society's UK Women in Economics Network, students can access mentoring, networking events and career insights from economists working across a wide range of sectors.
These opportunities help students from all backgrounds explore career pathways, build connections and see the many possibilities that an Economics degree can offer.
Read our blog to discover how Manchester is helping create a more diverse and inclusive economics profession and supporting students to achieve their career ambition.
Every year we have students from our economics courses (BSc, BA Econ and PPE) going on to postgraduate study here at Manchester, but also at other leading universities, including the following:
- Cambridge
- Oxford
- London School of Economics
- Imperial College
- King’s College
Find out more about postgraduate research.
Our students also go on to:
- advanced economics training;
- professional training within academia;
- other specialised training and into careers.
Our degrees are designed to help you gain useful employment through the knowledge of key concepts from economics and a subject-specific skill set through a range of transferable skills.
Concepts include:
- opportunity cost;
- the importance of incentives;
- the idea of equilibrium;
- disequilibrium and stability;
- strategic thinking;
- expectations and surprises;
- the relevance of marginal considerations.
Skills include:
- An ability to abstract. From the study of economic principles and models, students see how one can abstract the essential features of complex systems and provide a useable framework for evaluation and assessment of the effects of policy or other exogenous events.
- An ability to use various forms of logical analysis including both deduction and induction with economic reasoning often being formulated in terms of logical ways of using assumption-based models.
- An ability to organise, present and analyse data. Also knowledge of sources of relevance to understanding industry, business and government.
- An ability to frame questions. That is the ability to decide what should be taken as given or fixed for the purposes of setting up and solving a problem, ie what the important 'parameters' are in constraining the solution to the problem.
- An ability to analyse, manage and present information using numerical, statistical and computational skills.
Transferable skills give you the ability to:
- research, source and examine information thoroughly;
- critically analyse evidence and construct coherent arguments;
- write and speak well and communicate technical concepts to a broad audience;
- act independently and pursue one’s own intellectual endeavours;
- act with others in a team;
- take an open-minded approach to work.
Our students are typically very successful in getting useful and fulfilling employment or going on to further study.
Recent examples include:
- The UK Civil Service including the Government Economic Service, the Bank of England, the Department for International Development, the Home Office and the Foreign Office.
- Big city firms including KPMG, Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Citibank, United Assurance, HSBC, Prudential plc, Nationwide Building Society, Deutsche Bank and the Co-Op.
- Large industrial companies such as Ford, Rolls Royce, British Telecom and BP.
- Take the Manchester Leadership Programme, develop your leadership skills and participate in community volunteering.
- Fast track your career with the Manchester Graduate Internship Programme.
- Prospects for Economics – information on transferable skills, career areas and job options.
- Find out why career-minded undergraduates are opting for social sciences.
