How To Become A Regional Economist: What It Is and Career Path

What is a regional economist and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

2 min read

Quoted expert

Erik Johnson Ph.D.

There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a regional economist. For example, did you know that they make an average of $27.75 an hour? That's $57,727 a year! Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 6% and produce 1,000 job opportunities across the U.S.

What general advice would you give to a regional economist?

Erik Johnson Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Economics, Carthage College

Economics gives you a set of tools to analyze a variety of policy and business problems. However, determining which tools to apply in which situation requires that you learn the industry, you are working from top to bottom. When you begin a new job in a new field, be sure to do everything you can to understand how the organization and the industry work to understand the primary incentives that everyone faces. One right way to do this is to make as many connections within the company you are working for as possible and always be on the lookout for new opportunities within the company and how they can help you learn more. Moreover, do your best to ensure that a significant portion of your job involves some creative endeavors such as economic modeling or building tools for yourself or others to use. As computing power continues to become cheaper, and artificial intelligence becomes more advanced, relatively repetitive tasks become more comfortable and easier to automate. Therefore you will have less job security. Creative tasks such as modeling and tool building are difficult to automate and are more likely to provide you with more satisfaction.

ScoreRegional EconomistUS Average

Salary

4.5

Avg. Salary $57,727

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

4.3

Growth rate 6%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

2.5

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.21%

Asian 11.56%

Black or African American 4.50%

Hispanic or Latino 7.92%

Unknown 5.35%

White 70.45%

Gender

female 10.34%

male 89.66%

Age - 43

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 43

Stress level

4.3

Stress level is moderate

7.1 - high

Complexity level

10.0

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

5.2

Work life balance is fair

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a regional economist

Explore regional economist education requirements

Most common regional economist degrees

Bachelor's

62.1 %

Master's

27.6 %

Doctorate

6.9 %

Start to develop specific regional economist skills

Skills	Percentages
Economic Analysis	43.42%
Econometrics	28.55%
Macro	12.82%
Financial Markets	8.38%
FDIC	6.83%

Research regional economist duties and responsibilities

Manage, utilize, and archive database for commodities in assign areas.
Develop a series of short SAS programming training modules which will allow analysts to learn programming techniques base on business situations.
Develop, specify, and test econometric models using time-series econometrics, panel-data econometrics, and limit dependent variable techniques.
Utilize a combination of SQL querying and qualitative research to investigate results gain from statistical analyses.

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