20-Year Prospect
Economists are everywhere. Everywhere, we say!
You can find them toiling away at Silicon Valley tech companies like Facebook, eBay, and Google, where they work on projects like making online advertising more irritating and ubiquitous than it already is.
You can find them in the federal government, brainstorming the kinds of policies that gave $25 billion to Wells Fargo and $15 billion to Bank of America during the Great Recession so those fine financial institutions wouldn't sink forever, taking the U.S. economy with them.
If you do really well in the federal government – like, former-U.S.-Treasury-Secretary well – you can become the head of a private equity firm, where you'll earn a lot of money. A lot of money. Like, so much money, said private equity firm is uncomfortable releasing your compensation information to the press.
Economics are a big part of our lives, which is why – as we've pointed out – economists are everywhere...and they'll continue to be everywhere for years, so long as a crystal ball and years of graduate education are required to understand what, exactly, is going on with the global financial system.
If, however, the private and public sectors aren't your cup of tea as an economist, you can always pull a Ben Stein and attempt to teach high school students about the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act. Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?