Welcome to another issue of Girl Economics! Today we are interviewing Amelia Murdoch, a degree apprentice working within the Government Economic Service at the Office for National Statistics. We also have a deep dive into Doughnut Economics!

An Interview with… Amelia Murdoch

Why did you decide to go down the route of an apprenticeship with the Government Economic Service?

I had an offer to study at KCL in 2021 and I was not sure, after being cooped in indoors during COVID, whether I wanted to go to university. So I decided to take a year out, applied to lots of apprenticeships, worked for six months, and also spent time travelling around South America! Then I got into the Government Economic Service apprenticeship and I thought that would be something really suited to me: it meant that I was learning and then almost immediately had the opportunity to apply what I was learning to my work. I also think that it is giving me immediate professional experience, especially as it is becoming harder and harder to stand out with just a university degree.

Taking on a role within the civil service has also been utterly incredible for building my own professional network because you meet people in the Home Office, the Foreign Office, and so many other different departments!

Actively working also makes it so much easier to figure out whether you enjoy a certain role or industry than if you were at university.

What do you do in your role at the Office for National Statistics on a day to day basis?

I work in the Real Time Indicators Team. We produce a weekly bulletin which looks at a variety of different indicators so we speak to the Bank of England, we also might talk to a company like Pret for example and record how many coffees they have sold in different locations and whether that may indicate economic growth or decline. We essentially try to find ways to really simplify and explain economic growth more succinctly rather than just using economic indicators like GDP. The idea is to make a more accessible bulletin for people which is shorter and more engaging, offering an understanding of what is going on in the economy even to those people who don’t have a background in economics. I’ve had to learn lots of platforms that allow me to visualise data through learning coding languages like Python and R.

Could you tell us a bit more about how the Government Economic Service Apprenticeship works?

The idea is that you move around every two years between different roles. I’ve been with the Office for National Statistics for the past two years but have had about 4 different roles within the department over that time period. I’ve been involved in the census, looking at data on job quality in the UK, and am now working on real time indicators. I should be moving to another department in September and the idea is that you gain a greater understanding of what it is that you actually enjoy doing. You are randomly allocated to your initial department and I do love that because I don’t think I would have necessarily chosen the ONS but I have really enjoyed my time here and learned so much!

What advice would you have for people looking to improve their skills in coding and in using software such as Excel?

I think a lot is it is just trial and error. You can quite easily download excel spreadsheets and see whether you can make graphs and other data visuals using it. There are lots of platforms which are really helpful - I use Data Camp which has been exceptionally useful and really simplifies everything so if you can get access to it (it is a paid-for platform) then I would very much recommend it.

Also keeping your eye out on LinkedIn is brilliant because people will post about free courses or videos that could help you learn.

What do your future plans look like?

I study law part time alongside my apprenticeship and I would like to find something that combines both my study of law and my experience in the civil service. I’d find to find a job working in a British Embassy overseas looking at trade or investment. I’d particularly like to work in Latin America since I also speak Spanish. The biggest thing for me is trying to open myself up to as many opportunities as possible . What I have realised from working is that you really don’t know whether you like certain things until you are actually doing them

I’ve always loved economics but I didn’t know that I liked certain areas more than others until I started working in economics. It is hard to gauge that when you are just studying.

Would you recommend the experience of taking a year off?

If you know that you can take a year out, do something that will benefit you, use the year proactively and do something that will make a big difference then do it. It really depends if you think that you can get something out of it. For me I had the experience of working, travelling to lots of different places, and meeting so many different people that my gap year really opened up my eyes to what happens in other parts of the world and showed me different cultures. It also gave me the opportunity to go for an apprenticeship instead. In that respect I recommend it, but I would say don’t do it for the sole purpose of putting a pause on your life for a year.

Do you find that there was a big difference between the economics you did in sixth form and the economics you are now doing in industry?

I don’t think it is so different academically but I have found that the things that I find interesting have changed. In school I preferred macroeconomics but what I do now is more like econometrics. I didn’t really enjoy that area of economics when I was just studying it but now, doing it in practise, I really enjoy it!

The Deep Dive: Doughnut Economics

At Girl Economics we love to highlight the work of incredible female economists. Today we will be exploring the work of Kate Raworth, a self-proclaimed ‘renegade economist’ who is best known for her creation of the Doughnut model of social and planetary boundaries.

What does a doughnut have to do with economics? I’ll let Kate explain…

To recap (or if videos aren’t your thing!), The Doughnut consists of two concentric rings: a social foundation and an ecological ceiling. The idea is that an economy operating the the doughnut-shaped space between these boundaries is meeting the needs of all people so that no one falls short on life’s essentials (the social foundation) and is also producing within the means of the planet (ecological ceiling).

Doughnut economics itself proposes a radical shift in the economic mindset that we as a society have long adopted. Drawing on insights from a diverse range of schools of economic thought - including ecological, feminist, behavioural, and institutional economics - it defines seven ways that a 21st century economist should think;

1. Change the goal. Stop chasing GDP growth and instead focus on operating within the ‘doughnut’ that represents sustainable economic growth for both people and planet.

2. See the bigger picture. Kate thinks we need to move away from the idea of ‘the Market’ governing our economic transactions and instead think about the economy as being fundamentally embedded within our social, cultural, and environmental systems.

3. Nurture human nature. Are we rational 100% of the time? No. So our economic models shouldn’t, in Kate’s view, make such an assumption. Instead we should look to behavioural economics and be acutely aware of the biases and limitations we may have.

4. Get savvy with systems. Kate believes that the notion of seeking some sort of market equilibrium is completely arbitrary and that we need to view the economy as much more fluid and dynamic. According to Kate, all of those graphs you draw in A Level economics are quite pointless!

5. Design to distribute. Many leading economists are proponents of the idea that chasing growth will lead to falling levels of inequality in the long term. That hasn’t really happened yet and so Kate thinks we need to build a more equitable distribution of income, resources, and capital directly into our economic systems.

6. Create to regenerate. This is the idea that we should strive towards a more circular economy in which goods and services aren’t produced for single use, but are instead recycled and reused.

7. Be agnostic about growth. This is the big one: economic growth should not be the most important objective of economic policy!

Before you start ripping up the economic rulebook, there are some holes in the middle of Doughnut Economics. One such critique is that the idea that we aren’t wired to operate in a doughnut system. Do you care about how much you achieve compared to others? Do you care about your wealth and income? Well, a side effect of Raworth’s 7 principles is that we would have to eliminate such cares from the human psyche - this would simply be an impossibility! Another critique is that her ideas blatantly ignore the immense success of the capitalist model. Even notionally socialist Scandinavian nations have understood that a generous welfare state requires economic growth to sustain it. It may be instead argued that growth is not desired simply for the sake of growth. Instead, it is a necessary condition for reducing poverty and also tackling ecological damage such as climate change.

If you’d like to learn more, you can find Kate’s book here: https://www.kateraworth.com 

→ The book is a brilliant read which really challenges the idea of GDP being the primary determinant of economic ‘success’. Even if you don’t agree with all of Raworth’s ideas, her writing will definitely challenge your view of conventional economic theories!

🔔Opportunity Of The Day🔔

Work experience with Cooper Parry, an accountancy firm, for sixth form students.

That is all for this issue of Girl Economics! We have grown a lot over the past couple of days and I am so excited to bring these interviews to such an engaged audience!

If you have any feedback or suggestions then please to reach out to me here!

See you tomorrow, Erin McGurk 🙂