new york fed research assistant

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Prepare for a Future at the Fed

Hear what our research assistants say about the keys to their success!

Chart your academic journey and career

Coursework and technical skills are the key ingredient to your success.

Academic Journey

So you’re thinking of pursuing a career as an economist! When selecting courses, we encourage you to take econometrics, macro/micro economics—at least through intermediate theory—statistics, and mathematics. Seek opportunities to get some kind of research experience, even if just taking a class with a research requirement. And build relationships with professors who could write reference letters later. Brushing up on your technical chops will also help, so consider Object-Oriented Programing, and learning languages/frameworks such as Stata, MATLAB, Python, R, SAS, and LaTex.

Application Tips

Before applying, keep in mind that each location may have different hiring cycles and requirements. Please review each and plan accordingly. For example, some locations require a letter of recommendation from a professor, writing examples, and/or previous project-based experience. Other locations also would like to see that you have been a tutor or participated in an internship.

We wish you well on your journey!

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A Day in the Life

Research assistants engage in a wide variety of activities and tasks throughout the day.

Collect & Discover

As a research assistant, you will work alongside economists throughout the full lifecycle of research projects. Projects typically start with looking at a policy question and theory, reading the literature on the topic, then selecting and gathering data to test the theory.

Review & Analyze

After the data collection process, you will then perform data cleansing, regression analysis, and produce tables and graphs with the results.

Format & Present

Research findings are documented in policy briefings and working papers. RAs play an important role in helping to review all statistics, citations, and calculations reported in papers and ensuring that they are current before the paper is submitted to a journal or conference.

Work/Life Balance

It’s not all about the work! You’ll have plenty of time for social and enrichment activities inside and outside of work.

Research assistants shared with us the typical questions they receive. Here’s what they had to say.

Career Advice

What motivated you to pursue an economics career?

Honestly, it was my intermediate economics professor who saw how inquisitive I was in trying to understand why poverty still prevails in some of the wealthiest countries. I wanted to understand this more and make an impact.

Coursework and Skills

What types of classes should I take to strengthen my candidacy?

A combination of coursework in upper-level mathematics and statistics, econometrics, computer programming, and economics strengthens your application, but if you’ve gained similar experience through internships, jobs, enrichment programs or other training, highlight that in lieu of what may or may not be listed on your academic transcript.

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The economic research divisions across the Federal Reserve System offer a collegial and academic environment that emphasizes learning and teaching at all stages of careers. Members of the research departments collaborate to serve the public good and to challenge and support one another on their assumptions, thinking, and conclusions.

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Joining the New York Fed as a Research Economist

• The primary goal for new economists is to produce research and publish in the major journals. Our first-year plan allows new economists to devote most of their time to developing publishable work.
• New Ph.D. economists familiarize themselves with the Bank’s policy missions by interacting with economists in their area. They may contribute to a team working on a policy issue or help prepare a briefing on economic developments for the Bank’s president and senior officers.
• Economists regularly work together on policy initiatives, and this teamwork encourages a lively camaraderie that can be missing in academic departments.
• Economists frequently coauthor articles and make joint presentations.
• Teaching activity . Economists have the opportunity to teach while on staff—whether taking a leave of absence from the Bank or teaching part-time while here.
• Sabbatical program . Under the program, economists have worked at such institutions as the Federal Reserve Board, Columbia, NYU, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale.
• Visiting scholars program . We regularly invite economists from major research institutions to be visiting scholars at the Bank. Visitors present their own work and make themselves available to discuss our economists’ research.
• Resident scholars program . Economists with international reputations pursue their own research while providing intellectual leadership by advising and collaborating with Bank economists.
• Conferences . The New York Fed sponsors conferences and workshops that draw an elite group of participants from leading universities and business schools and enable Bank economists to interact with top academics in their field.
• Seminars . Our economists benefit from the New York Fed’s proximity to top-tier universities, frequently giving seminars at these institutions. We also offer a seminar series that attracts a broad group of distinguished speakers, with several seminars a week.
• Tools for policy analysis . Research can result in the development of new tools and indicators for forecasting and policy analysis. Our efforts to share the methodology, code, data visualizations, and commentary help the work gain visibility and draw important feedback from others in the research community.
• A state-of-the-art computing environment . We provide economists with a wide array of technology resources, the ability to take advantage of real and financial data series, and electronic access to academic journals.
• Skilled research analysts . Economists are assisted by forty research analysts who help gather data, conduct statistical analysis, and prepare materials for presentations. Our RAs are typically recent college graduates, many of whom go on to pursue a Ph.D. in economics.
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The work of an economist at the New York Fed is similar in some important ways to that of an economist in academia, especially regarding research. In both cases, the goal is to do research that breaks new ground in our understanding of some aspect of the economy. As in academia, the work can be theoretical or empirical, or a combination of the two; can involve traditional econometric analysis, simulation, or survey results; and can rely on data that is widely used in the profession or be based on new sources of information not traditionally accessed by economists.

What distinguishes research by our economists is that it tends to be grounded in the real-world questions related to the Fed’s policy missions. Although the Bank doesn’t direct research, economists often find important, natural synergies between their independent academic-style research and their policy work. They are able to bring the insights and techniques they’ve developed through their research to work on the Fed’s policy missions.

At the same time, working on these policy issues suggests new topics for research, areas where the current state of inquiry or knowledge could be enhanced, and where the frontier of work could be pushed forward.

It is the ability to make direct contributions to policy that affects our economy and financial system that really differentiates being an economist at the Fed from being an economist in academia.

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Why Are There So Few Black Economists at the Fed?

Monroe Gamble became the San Francisco Fed’s first Black research assistant in 2018. His path shows why fixing a striking diversity shortfall will take commitment.

J. Monroe Gamble IV pushed for changes to the hiring process at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Credit... Christopher Smith for The New York Times

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By Jeanna Smialek

• Feb. 2, 2021

WASHINGTON — J. Monroe Gamble IV was the first Black research assistant to work at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. He started in 2018.

That one data point speaks to a broader reality: Even as America’s central bank dedicates research and attention to racial economic outcomes and publicly champions inclusion, it has had a poor record of building a work force that looks like the population it is meant to serve.

Many parts of the Fed system, which includes the Federal Reserve Board in Washington and 12 regional banks, began to concentrate more intently on diversifying their heavily white economics staffs only within the last decade, prompted in part by the 2010 Dodd Frank Act, which pushed the board to hire more broadly. When it comes to employing Black economists in particular, the central bank still falls short.

Officials have often blamed the pipeline — Ph.D. economists are heavily white and Asian — but a New York Times analysis suggests the issue goes even beyond that. Black people are less represented within the Fed than in the field as a whole. Only two of the 417 economists, or 0.5 percent, on staff at the Fed’s board in Washington were Black, as of data the Fed provided last month. Black people make up 13 percent of America’s population and 3 to 4 percent of the U.S. citizens and permanent residents who graduate as Ph.D. economists each year.

Practices that favor job candidates with similar life experiences and those from elite economics programs, which are often heavily white, have sometimes prevented diverse hiring, current and former employees said. A brash culture can make some parts of the central bank unwelcoming, which can lower retention.

Shares of the population and among economists

(non-Hispanic)

Ph.D. graduates

in economics

population *

Ph.D. economists

Federal Reserve *

Only 1 percent of economists at the Fed are Black.

U.S. population

Ph.D. graduates in economics

among the population *

Ph.D. economists at

the Federal Reserve *

Across the board and the Fed system’s 12 regional banks, 1.3 percent of economists identified as Black alone. That aggregate figure masks wide variation. Five of the banks lacked a single economist who identified as only Black. People who identified as “two or more races” — of whom there were six in the Fed’s whole system — were not included in the count since their racial identity was not specified.

Number of Ph.D. economists

at each Federal Reserve branch

more races,

non-hispanic

Philadelphia

Minneapolis

Govs. (D.C.)

Number of Ph.D. economists at each Federal Reserve branch

non-Hispanic

Kansas City

San Francisco

Board of Governors

(District of Columbia)

When it came to research assistants, an entry-level version of an economics job that generally requires a bachelor’s degree, 3.7 percent were Black — versus 5 percent of economics graduates. Just one of a dozen branch presidents is Black — Raphael Bostic in Atlanta — and none of the Fed’s six presidentially appointed governors are.

The Fed, which does not publish such granular data on diversity within its ranks but collated the numbers in response to more than a dozen New York Times requests, noted that the figures were voluntarily reported by employees and may be incomplete.

The picture that emerges is one in which Black Americans are lightly represented in the rooms where key policy choices are informed and made, even though perhaps no other racial group is so acutely affected by how successfully the Fed manages business cycles.

Black unemployment rises sharply during downturns, then falls more slowly in recoveries. The Fed has taken extraordinary actions to cushion the economic blow of a pandemic crisis that has hit communities of color hard. How those work, and when and how they are removed, will reverberate across the labor market and through the wealth distribution for years to come.

In recognition of that, the Fed has increasingly focused on disparate racial outcomes — even holding a “ racism and the economy ” conference series this year — and has worked on its hiring processes to try to improve internal diversity.

Calls to speed that process up could be imminent. Since at least the early 1990s, members of Congress have pushed the central bank to hire a staff that looks more like America. More recently, President Biden pledged to push the Fed to diversify as part of his campaign platform. He also suggested changing the Federal Reserve Act so that policymakers focus more on gaps in racial economic outcomes including wages, jobs and wealth.

It remains to be seen whether those positions make it into policy, but Mr. Biden has hired broadly for top administration roles, including tapping Cecilia Rouse, a Black economist, as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. None of the top Fed posts in Washington that are appointed by the president have been filled yet — only one is vacant — but diversity is likely to be a consideration.

At a staff level, change will require a more systemic effort. Mr. Gamble, who goes by Monroe and is in his 20s, has a story that bears on that challenge in hopeful and cautionary ways.

His family was not affluent while he was growing up in Kansas City, Mo., but lived in a heavily white school district that had more resources than others in the area, which he counts as an early advantage.

Mr. Gamble started at Virginia Tech on a full scholarship, but health issues prompted him to drop out of that program — then another one. For a time he found himself homeless, sleeping on friends’ couches and floors. He worked three jobs at once to support himself, unloading trucks at a sporting goods store, selling men’s suits in the afternoon and working in a pizza shop at night.

He kept his dream of graduating alive. It took him seven years, several colleges and five attempts at multivariate calculus — which he found high school had left him underprepared for — but he finished in 2017 with a degree in business, emphasis on economics, and a minor in mathematics from the University of Missouri.

Every story is unique, but Mr. Gamble’s is in line with that of many other young Black men: For the group of students who entered college in 2010, government data show that just 34 percent of Black men graduated within six years, compared with 57 percent of men overall.

Such résumés can be a kiss of death in a field like economics, where every summer internship and transcript grade dictates future opportunities.

But Mr. Gamble left college with a plan. He had discovered his interest in economics partway through university, when he found an old textbook in a public library and read it cover to cover, soaking in the descriptive logic — only to realize a Black man had written the text. It inspired him.

He dedicated his undergraduate summers to working on research projects with college professors and attending programs meant to help students from less-privileged backgrounds get on track to a doctorate, assembling a who’s who list of academic economists as recommenders.

Still, that wasn’t enough to get him a job at the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago or the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, all of which he had applied to, upon graduation. It did secure him a spot as an economic research scholar at Harvard University. And when he reapplied to the Fed the next year, with Harvard on his résumé, San Francisco hired him.

He felt out of place at the central bank branch and struggled to find meaningful work. He began asking around and learned that he was the first Black person ever to hold a research assistant job. Within months, he was looking to leave.

Then Mary C. Daly, who was the recently promoted president of the reserve bank, had lunch with him.

She, too, had an underdog background. She had dropped out of high school and passed a high school equivalency exam, and had attended a University of Missouri branch. She persuaded Mr. Gamble not to give up on the job just yet, urging him to give her six months and promising to help him find something new if he still wanted to leave at that point. He stuck it out — for six months, then for a year.

Eventually, he was promoted to be Ms. Daly’s personal research assistant.

Even as his own experience improved, Mr. Gamble became troubled by bank hiring practices. Research assistants helped to hire the next classes of R.A.s. He suspected it might be the case that screeners simply did not find Black candidates relatable and ruled them out early on.

“They’re going to pick people who are like them,” he said.

He pushed for changes, and San Francisco listened. Application readers began to talk through what would make a good candidate before the hiring process began, and discussed why they assigned job candidates the scores they did.

“They’re struggling with their responsibility to be a gatekeeper to economics,” Mr. Gamble said, referring to the fact that Fed assistantships are often a critical step for recent graduates hoping to get into doctorate programs.

Ms. Daly said Mr. Gamble had made a “material change” at her Fed. And improving is a priority because, as she puts it, “policymaking reflects those around the table.”

Mr. Gamble is now in a predoctoral program at New York University. Mentors who helped him along the way, including Lisa Cook at Michigan State University, Ms. Daly at the Fed and now Peter Blair Henry — a leading Black economist whom he is working with at N.Y.U. — were critical links in the chain that is leading him to a Ph.D.

His story suggests that diversifying is a matter of tearing down structural barriers that have long shut out talented people of color and offering support and inclusion once they arrive.

Fed officials in Washington said they were trying to better serve those goals. The board in 2018 hired Quentin Johnson as its first diversity outreach manager, and he is deepening the system’s relationships with a broad set of schools, including historically Black colleges and universities. Recruiting practices are becoming standardized to correct for hidden biases, the officials said. Whether the effort sticks is the question. Fed jobs should be open “to all competent Americans,” Henry Gonzalez, a Democratic congressman from Texas, once told the Fed chair at the time, Alan Greenspan. Mr. Greenspan assured lawmakers the Fed was working toward diversity.

That was 1993.

Jim Tankersley and Karl Russell contributed reporting.

Jeanna Smialek writes about the Federal Reserve and the economy. She previously covered economics at Bloomberg News, where she also wrote feature stories for Businessweek magazine. More about Jeanna Smialek

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Research Assistants with the Federal Reserve System

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