What can you do with an economics degree?
Where economics graduates actually work, and how exposed those jobs are to AI. Built from ACS 2020-2024 5-year PUMS: 60,948 people whose bachelor's degree is in this field, aged 22-64.
Economics leads to a wide spread of office careers, not mainly to economist jobs. The largest scored destination is lawyer, at about 4.5 in 100 graduates, followed by financial managers at about 4 in 100. About 3 in 100 each work as management analysts and accountants or auditors. Roughly 2 in 100 each are financial analysts, personal financial advisors and software developers.
Only about 1 in 100 works as an economist, an occupation we do not score. The BLS says economists typically need at least a master's degree. Larger groups we do not score are managers in other roles (about 6. 5 in 100), chief executives and legislators (about 4 in 100) and postsecondary teachers (about 2 in 100).
This page covers about 55% of economics graduates, closer to our 50% minimum than most degrees, so read the exposure figure as describing only the jobs we score. The numbers come from Census data on more than 60,000 people with an economics degree. Many of the same jobs appear on the finance page.
How exposed are economics jobs to AI?
We give economics no overall verdict. About 58% of the graduates we can score work in jobs we rate At risk, including financial managers, management analysts and accountants and auditors. About 31% work in jobs rated AI-resistant despite the paperwork, led by lawyers and personal financial advisors. The At risk share is well short of the 70% our rule needs.
The largest single scored destination, lawyer, also requires a further professional degree after the bachelor's, so, in our reading, it reflects a later choice as much as the economics degree. We cover 55% of graduates, and our confidence is insufficient to commit to one label.
These figures cover the 55% of economics graduates who work in occupations we score. The other 45% work in roles we do not cover (largest: Other Managers; Chief Executives and Legislators; Postsecondary Teachers). Signal 01 averages each job's own structural exposure, weighted by how many graduates work there; it describes tasks, not whether jobs will disappear.
Where economics graduates actually work
These 10 occupations account for 34% of economics graduates. The rest are spread across many smaller occupations, each under 1%. Graduates often work outside the field.
What the research says about AI and economics graduates
The Census Bureau working paper (September 2026) places economics in the ninth of its ten exposure groups, alongside accounting and finance. In Appendix Table A3, economics, from about 31,000 graduates between 2018 and 2022, has a 2024 employment result level with the average major's change since 2022 and an earnings result about 5% weaker than average. The Dallas Fed, NBER and Employ America do not report economics separately.
The paper cautions that its measures miss graduate school and self-employment, which could matter for economics: the BLS says economists typically need at least a master's degree, and lawyers, the largest scored destination, need a law degree. The studies disagree about whether AI explains any graduate weakness, and none isolates economics, so we do not read the earnings figure as evidence that AI caused it.
Read the full evidence review: what the studies say about AI and graduate jobs →
Degrees whose graduates work in similar jobs
How this page was built
Graduate shares come from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS 2020-2024 5-year PUMS), field of degree "Economics" (code 5501), weighted to the population. Each occupation we cover is scored with the numbers already published on its own page on this site, then averaged by graduate share. Occupations without a page are shown but never scored. Graduates aged 22-64 are included, so the mix reflects the whole working-age group, not only recent graduates. The survey records the most recent occupation of people who were not working when surveyed (unemployed or out of the labor force), and they are counted in it: across the degrees on this site that is about 9 in 100 graduates, between 6 and 13 in 100 depending on the degree, so "work as" on this page means "work or last worked as". Sources: www2.census.gov, www2.census.gov, www.dallasfed.org, www.nber.org, employamerica.org, www.bls.gov, www.bls.gov, www.bls.gov, www.bls.gov. This page is general information, not career or educational advice.