Economic Data Scientist

Position Summary:

The Economic Data Scientist will be part of the Economy, Strategy & Finance (ESF) Center of The Conference Board, contributing to the development and delivery of flagship economic data products, including global business cycle indicators and labor market analytics tools. The role will work across several ESF teams, particularly Global Indicators and Labor Markets, to support the Center's initiatives to enhance its industry-recognized indices and data products.

The ideal Economic Data Scientist candidate brings a strong data science skillset, experience working with large, complex datasets, and applying statistical modeling. The Economic Data Scientist will use R, Python, and other tools to streamline data flows; apply predictive modeling and machine learning techniques to improve analytical capabilities; and help ideate new data products. They will work on ESF's core products, including The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index®, Leading Economic Indicators, and Help Wanted OnLine® its proprietary database of job postings.  

The role also supports ESF's insights creation for use by ESF's experts to generate written content, webcasts, and briefings for a business executive audience.

Accountabilities:

Lead projects to support data improvement initiatives across Global Indicators and Labor Markets teams, including the Leading Economic Indices, the Consumer Confidence Index®, and the Help Wanted Online® program, ensuring data quality, methodological rigor, and timely delivery.

• Partner with Senior Economists to design and automate the processes behind ESF's data releases, aiming to improve efficiency and accuracy, while seeking ways to expand capabilities that enhance depth of products and insights.
• Apply advanced statistical and machine learning techniques to enhance global indicators, business cycle tools, and forecasting products.
• Support data infrastructure modernization, contributing to plans regarding server migration, data architecture design, and implementation.
• Conduct data evaluation, including assessments of vendor datasets and external data sources, ensuring consistency, quality, and alignment with evolving product and research needs.
• Communicate findings to Senior Economists, presenting a cohesive narrative through data sources, methodology, and visualizations.
• Ideate and identify new data products to support revenue.  

Qualifications:

• Master's degree required in economics, data science, or related quantitative field.
• This position is data-intensive and the candidate must have experience working in a data-intensive research environment with data analysis software (e.g., R, Python, SAS, SQL, Excel) to independently organize and manipulate large datasets, draw insights, and create visualizations. Experience with Tableau or other data visualization tools is preferred.
• Prior experience with machine learning techniques and natural language processing methods such as sentiment analysis, is also preferred.
• Knowledge of the US economy and the labor market is necessary.
• Experience writing for non-academic audiences (i.e., business); strong writing, communication, and presentation skills are preferred.