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Your team

We are seeking recent graduates for our 2022/2023 traineeship programme. You will be assigned to the Prices and Costs Division within the Directorate General Economics.

The Prices and Costs Division monitors, analyses and forecasts inflation in the euro area and its countries and sectors and assesses cyclical and structural inflationary drivers.  It also assesses inflationary pressures from the external environment and from domestic wage and profit developments, as well as the associated prospects, risks and uncertainties. It provides input into internal decision-making processes and external communications on inflation. The Division also contributes to the Price-setting Microdata Analysis (PRISMA) Network, which is aimed at deepening understanding of price-setting behaviour and inflation dynamics in the EU.

In your role as trainee, you will be part of our data team responsible for preparing presentations, conducting empirical analyses and enhancing analytical tools. You will work closely with our experienced economists.

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.

Your role

As a trainee you will:

• contribute to the Division’s regular internal and external products (including the Economic Bulletin and the Macroeconomic Projections report), for instance by preparing tables and charts for reports or PowerPoint presentations, in collaboration with other business areas;
• process, consolidate and transform datasets, maintain and develop databases and visualisation tools, and use microdata, in order to monitor inflation and real economic developments;
• support input to policy decision-making by conducting empirical analyses using data analysis, statistical and econometrics tools;
• contribute to enhancing analytical, econometric and forecasting tools;
• support analysis of wage and price inflation; you may also contribute to the PRISMA, working with large datasets on prices from different sources, including from web scraping.

This position offers you excellent opportunities to enhance your quantitative skills, work on analytical tasks and collaborate with experienced central bank economists. It also provides a unique occasion to gain insight into analysis and policy within a central bank, which will help you further develop your career. You will be part of a multicultural team that strives for continuous innovation to make a positive impact on the lives of European citizens.

Qualifications, experience and skills

Essential: 

• a bachelor’s degree or higher in economics, statistics, data science or another relevant field;
• practical experience in working with databases, including constructing and managing complex datasets, and preparing charts and tables for reports and presentations;
• practical experience in statistical and econometric analysis using programming languages such as MATLAB, R, Python, SQL or VBA for Excel, or statistical and econometric software, such as EViews or Stata;
• an interest in conducting applied economic analysis to underpin policy advice;
• a good knowledge of the MS Office package, particularly Excel and PowerPoint;
• 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: 

• a master’s degree or higher in economics, econometrics, statistics or another relevant field, as well as a broad knowledge of macroeconomics;
• a solid background in econometrics (in particular, time series econometrics, panel data econometrics and microeconometrics) or statistics and data science (for example, text analysis or machine learning);
• practical experience in using web scraping or application programming interfaces (APIs) to collect data, working with relational databases, using SQL and/or big data analytic tools on Hadoop, Spark or similar big data frameworks; practical experience in using visualisation tools, such as creating interactive web applications using, for example, R Shiny or Tableau;
• a good understanding of the economic issues related to price and wage developments.

You are curious and eager to learn, and want to further develop your ability to analyse complex information. You are keen to collaborate with others, pursue team goals and learn from other people’s diverse perspectives. You strive to know and anticipate stakeholder needs, and will signal any need for change and propose alternative solutions.

You are motivated to contribute to the ECB’s mission, to serve the citizens of the EU as a member of a public institution and to work with colleagues from all over Europe. You are keen to be part of our team and to use your skills and competencies to achieve the aims of this position.

Closing date: 17.08.2022

Further information

Traineeship of between three and 12 months in total, starting 1 October 2022 at the earliest.

Application and selection process

Further information on how to join us is available on our website.

The recruitment process for this position will include an online interview via WebEx. 

If you are not selected for this position but are still considered suitable, you will be placed on a reserve list for 12 months from the closing date for applications, from which you might be considered for similar positions within the ECB.