The European Central Bank offers PhD Traineeship in the Directorate General Economics – Supply Side, Labour and Surveillance Division.
Your team
You will be part of the Supply Side, Labour and Surveillance Division in the Directorate General Economics. We are a team of around 30 experts responsible for conducting analysis of the euro area labour market and long-term drivers of economic growth, including productivity, as well as cross-country analysis of macroeconomic vulnerabilities. We also look at economic issues relating to EU governance, with a focus on Next Generation EU and the deepening of Economic and Monetary Union. Our most recent work has focused on the drivers of labour market developments, the role of structural changes (such as digitalisation, demographic changes and climate change) in the euro area economy and the impact of government policies to support the economy.
Your role
In your role as a PhD trainee, you will contribute to empirical work in the areas of labour markets, firm productivity, long-term drivers of economic growth and macroeconomic risks and vulnerabilities in the euro area.
The ECB is an inclusive employer and we strive to reflect the diversity of the population we serve. We encourage you to apply irrespective of age, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, race, religious beliefs, sexual orientation or other characteristics.
As a PhD trainee you will:
- support the Division’s analytical agenda on key policy questions;
- conduct empirical analyses using state-of-the-art economic and econometric models;
- help to enhance analytical, econometric and forecasting tools under the supervision of ECB experts;
- have the opportunity to submit the resulting papers for publication in the ECB’s Working Paper Series and academic journals.
Qualifications, experience and skills
Essential:
- a master’s degree and at least two years of PhD studies in economics, finance, statistics, data science or a related field;
- a sound understanding of, and theoretical background in, macroeconomics and the economic and institutional context in which the ECB fulfils its mandate;
- excellent knowledge of, and a track record in, state-of-the-art modelling tools and econometric techniques or data analytics;
- programming skills in one or more of the following software packages: MATLAB, Stata, Python, R or Julia;
- a good knowledge of the MS Office package;
- an advanced (C1) command of English and an intermediate (B1) command of at least one other official language of the EU, according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.
Desired:
- experience in one of the following: applied microeconometrics for the labour market, corporate finance and firm dynamics; applied time series for empirical macroeconomics; panel data analysis for empirical macroeconomics; dynamic stochastic general equilibrium modelling (including heterogeneous agent models); machine learning techniques.
Application Deadline: 30 October, 2025
Find more information here.