Economic Research Associate or Analyst II

Description
We are seeking a skilled Economist to analyze financial, transportation, and socioeconomic data to identify trends and build predictive models that provide strategic insight and guide decision-making.

As a premier multi-modal planning and project implementation agency, SANDAG relies on the quality and capacity of our Data Science Department to deliver multi-disciplinary analytics and forecasting. The Data Science Department is tasked with formulating actionable insights and implementing valuable initiatives related to big data, open data, data analytics, and economic research.

The Data Science Department delivers data services that enhance the San Diego regional economy using descriptive and predictive data to help make informed policy decisions, while using an open data platform to improve transparency and share information with others.

Role
This role combines economic theory, statistical analysis, and real-world data to forecast economic conditions and evaluate how policy and transportation infrastructure can impact the San Diego region. This position will perform research, analysis, and modeling on regional economic and fiscal issues that support activities and programs across the Agency, including Planning, Grants, Capital Projects, Finance and Transportation Modeling.

The Economist will play a critical role in developing and maintaining tailored data-driven models that (1) support strategic and operational decision-making across the organization, and (2) pragmatically align with data availability and resource constraints. The methods will be grounded in established literature and focused on improving methodology and replicability through systematic enhancements and improved documentation.

Expectations of this role include ability to: perform analysis with limited supervision; deliver high quality output in a timely manner; participate in the development, dissemination, and presentation of research findings; work in team environment; and approach projects with pragmatic curiosity and a "customer" focus.

This position may be filled at the Associate Analyst or Senior Analyst level.

Job Responsibilities
The Economics team has four core functions. Below describes the responsibilities in each functional area.

• Econometric modeling – Build and deploy econometric models to support activities and programs across the Agency, such as inputs to SANDAG's activity-based travel model and traffic and revenue studies and regional forecasting of jobs, income, price elasticities, and use of transportation infrastructure. Essential activities include implementing quantitative and econometric methodologies, leveraging economic reasoning to understand economic and population dynamics, and visualizing data to reveal insights.
• Benefit-cost analysis – Conduct analyses that capture the private and public benefits and costs of transportation projects and are compliant with federal and state guidance.
• Financial analysis and forecasting – Interpret current and historical data to predict future economic conditions, maintain forecasting models and develop tools to enable ad-hoc forecast updates and inputs from other models.
• Present findings through technical reports, charts, and presentations for both technical and nontechnical audiences.

Required Skills

• Demonstrated knowledge of economic principles, modeling, and forecasting.
• Strong programming skills (R, SQL, Python), and familiarity with GIS desirable.
• Excellent communication abilities -both written and visual (tables, graphs, and other data visualizations).
• Ability to document work to ensure transparency in assumptions and replicability of results.
• Collaborative mindset with cross-functional teams (e.g. finance, travel modelers, planners, data scientists).

Typical Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in economics, mathematics, statistics, or a related field. Advanced degree in economics, econometrics or public policy is desirable.
• Five years of recent experience in applied economics or a related field.
• Solid working knowledge of data available at US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, CA Employment Development Department, US Census, IPUMS.
• Demonstrated experience performing analytical work, grounded in mathematical and statistical calculations. Descriptive and inferential statistics and econometric modeling (choice modeling, panel data regressions) is highly desirable.
• Proficiency using IMPLAN and REMI is desirable.