16 things economics majors should do in December to help their 2026 job search

It’s best to reach out to your professors, former internship supervisors, and family friends NOW to ask for job leads and introductions.

December is when many people have extra time before the holidays and feel generous about helping students. Do not wait until January, when everyone is busy and stressed.

Use the simplest outreach methods in a friendly way. Try something as simple as: “Hi, Professor Smith, I’m graduating soon and looking for economics jobs in data analysis. Are you able to connect me with someone who would be able to help me?”

Most great jobs aren’t even posted as job ads. You need to get to the point where people in the company know you. Employees want to recommend their friends because hiring is risky. When someone refers you to the manager, you have much more credibility.

Apply to job postings online as well, but getting to know people in the company will put you at the front of the line for interviews. Doing this in December will set you up with interviews, while other people who are graduating at the same time will barely be starting their job search.

Remember, the early bird really does get the best jobs.

I’d venture to say that one of the wisest things you can do is create a one-page reverse résumé. And I don’t mean a list of your accomplishments (though that’s obviously worthwhile, too). I mean a document that demonstrates how you think. Pick one real company and go deep on one of its issues (declining revenue, supply-chain bottlenecks, missed market opportunities, etc.). Sketch out a basic economic framework or recommendation for that company. You don’t need any insider information; public information and reasonable logic will do. Email it directly to someone on the strategy/analytics team (or maybe even the CFO). It takes three hours of your time, costs nothing, and will automatically distinguish you from the 98% of graduates still perfecting their cover letters in December.

And, to be honest, economics majors have a unique opportunity to demonstrate their value before they’re asked to do so. So if you want to be memorable in January, show them how you think in December. Results always trump promises. Start thinking like the person who’s already in the room. That’s the kind of move that gets doors opened fast.

I run a national dental supply company, and I’ve hired across operations, sales, and logistics for years. Here’s what actually separates candidates in January: spend December talking to people who have the job you want, not just applying online.

When I’m reviewing candidates, the ones who stand out aren’t those with perfect GPAs—they’re the ones who can speak intelligently about real problems in our industry. In our last hiring cycle, we brought in someone who’d spent their winter break interviewing small-business owners about supply-chain pain points. They walked into our meeting already understanding the impact of tariffs and the inventory challenges we were facing. That’s the hire I made.

December is dead time for most students, but it’s prime time for informal conversations. Reach out to 10-15 people in your target industry and ask for 15-minute calls about what keeps them up at night. When I launched our tariff-resilient pricing model, it came from months of listening to dental practices explain their budget constraints. You can conduct the same research in three weeks.

By January, you’ll interview differently from everyone else. You won’t be guessing what the company needs—you’ll already know, because five people told you they have the same problem. I’ve passed on candidates with better credentials because someone else showed up already understanding our actual challenges. That research advantage is sitting there in December while everyone else is passive.

They should use December to build a simple, believable story about how they use data to make decisions because employers respond to candidates who can connect numbers to real outcomes. They should pick one or two class projects or internships and rewrite them in plain English so they can explain the problem, the approach they took, and what changed as a result. In our plumbing shop, we hire for technical roles the same way, and the people who can talk through a workflow or cost decision without jargon always stand out. A useful step is to create a one-page “work snapshot” with a short summary of those examples and a few tools they are comfortable with. They should share it with a friend and ask whether it reads clearly and confidently. If they enter the new year with tight, easy-to-share stories, employers can quickly see how they think and where they would add value.

Set up a December skill swap with someone well outside your coursework. Pair up with a friend in computer science, design, behavioral research, or public policy.

Give them a short lesson in something in economics that they have always found confusing. They teach you a skill that they treat like second nature. It could be a simple data visualization technique, a forecasting trick they use in their coding projects, or a communication habit that helps explain complex material without turning it into a lecture.

This small exchange gives you cross-field instincts that employers crave at the start of each year. Hiring teams look for people who can slide into mixed groups and solve problems without getting stuck in a narrow track. Your new blend of skills will quickly set you apart as companies begin posting their first wave of roles in January.

In December, reach out to five hiring managers per week at companies you are actually interested in. Do not contact recruiters. Do not contact HR. Target people with P&L responsibility—people who would feel the pain if a role stays unfilled. Find them on LinkedIn. Send them a 75-word message with no attachments and no resume—just value. Offer to do a two-hour test project over the break for free—something they can actually use, such as a spreadsheet audit or a competitive market snapshot. If you send 20 of those, you will get replies. If your work is good, some will pay. If your timing is right, they will remember your name in February.

The whole point is to kill the waiting game before it starts. If your strategy in December is “update resume and apply in March,” you will be 100th in line. But if they have already talked to you, already seen how you think, and already read your summary deck or forecast, you skip the line. The job search is a funnel: volume, velocity, and one good conversion. That is it.

One of the most important things economics majors should do in December is to build a real-world economic analysis portfolio that applies data to decision-making, not just theory. Employers hiring in early 2026 want candidates who can translate economic models into insights that affect actual business outcomes, and the cleanest way to prove that skill is with a self-directed analysis project.

At WhatAreTheBest.com, we review and score thousands of SaaS tools, including a large number of fintech, pricing, forecasting, and market analytics platforms. Across all that work, one pattern is clear: people who understand economics as a practical tool instead of an abstract discipline stand out immediately. During our AWS migration and the restructuring of more than eight thousand product and SaaS categories, the insights that mattered most were economic ones: how shifts in demand form, how competitive landscapes change, how price sensitivity affects conversion, and how concentration risk can destabilize an entire vertical.

A perfect December project is a market dynamics case study. Pick an industry, gather publicly available data, model demand elasticity, price sensitivity, or competitive shifts, and write a short insight memo explaining what the data imply for strategy. Bonus points if you automate part of the data collection with an API or use AI to test assumptions.

Employers want economists who can connect the dots between theory, data, and business decisions. If your December work shows that skill, you’ll stand out on day one of the 2026 hiring cycle.

Albert Richer

Founder, WhatAreTheBest.com

If you want to get noticed early, start writing about what’s happening in your field. Pick a topic like AI in marketing or the creator economy, and just go for it. When I was hiring at GRIN, the new grads who posted on LinkedIn or maintained a blog always stood out. Even two or three posts can give you something real to talk about in an interview. Share your work and get feedback; it shows you’re actually paying attention.

Here’s a tip I give in December: put together a list of the specific tools and projects you’ve used in your classes or internships, such as data visualization or AI tools. That way, when hiring kicks off in January, you won’t be scrambling to remember what you actually did. This approach has worked well for students entering real estate and finance. The ones who can show me how they solved a real problem always stand out more in the early rounds.

I find that the smart job seeker cleans up their online presence in December. In earnest, set aside an hour and a half, then clean up and rewrite every public profile, resume, or bio under your name. Audit it. Hold it up to the light of simplicity: does it tell me what you fix or what you’ve learned? Truth be told, a good update is worth more than another line in your letter of recommendation. It’s compound interest. A little polish today compounds into returns later.

On top of that, schedule a 15-minute “Opportunity Scan” reminder on your calendar to recur once a month, starting today and continuing for the next six months. No more, no less. It doesn’t matter if you apply that day or not. By then, you’ll have a job search cadence while others are still asking themselves which city they want to live in. In that case, the one who actually shows up, both in their digital presence and in their mind, gets the callback.

I’ve been managing office spaces and onboarding professionals for over five years, and I’ve noticed that economics grads often overlook one crucial December move: secure your professional presence before you need it.

Last month, I had three recent grads sign up for virtual office addresses in early December specifically because they were launching consulting practices or applying to competitive roles. They needed a credible Las Vegas business address on their applications and LinkedIn profiles immediately—rather than their parents’ house in Henderson. Two of them landed interviews within three weeks because they looked established from day one.

Here’s what worked: they set up their virtual office by December 10th, updated all their professional profiles with the business address, and started applying with that credibility already in place. When employers Googled them, they saw a legitimate business location at a recognized executive suite center, not a residential apartment. One attorney client told me it made the difference between looking like a student and looking like a professional ready to bill clients.

The cost was under $100 per month, but the perceived value was easily 10x that. December is when you lock in those credibility markers before January’s hiring surge hits. Once you’re in interviews, it’s too late to build that foundation.

For economics majors, one key December task is to be very specific about where you want to work and why. General interest is forgettable; targeted interest is memorable.

When a candidate explains exactly how our supply chain works and where they can help, I pay attention. That shows they did more than skim our homepage.

Use December to build a focused employer map:

Pick 10 employers that value economics skills (logistics, policy, banking, consulting, and marketplaces).

For each, learn its business model, revenue drivers, and current challenges.

Identify how entry-level roles connect to those challenges.

Use that research to tailor your resume bullets and your initial outreach in January.

By early 2026, you won’t just be looking for a job; you’ll be ready to speak each employer’s language.

You’re an economics major looking to land a great job early in 2026. In that case, one of the best things you can do in December is to start gaining real-world experience that connects your education to everyday industries. I always recommend looking at sectors like Sage, where a lot of data and business decision-making are happening behind the scenes. You can use what you’ve learned about supply and demand, pricing strategy, and market behavior to analyze how storage companies manage occupancy, respond to seasonal changes, and grow in certain areas.

Even if you’re not applying to a storage company, showing that you’ve thought critically about how economics applies to real business decisions makes you stand out. Reach out to local businesses, offer to help with a simple analysis, or write a blog post breaking down a real example. That kind of initiative looks great to employers and builds your confidence before applications even open.

What I think economics majors must do in December is get an in-demand certification for data analysis. Stop thinking that your theoretical degree will get you a job because the market has changed a great deal. You worked for years to become an expert in complex theories, and today’s employers are furious because new hires often can’t perform simple financial modelling or do an econometrics test without technical training. Your degree is dying all by itself, as reports indicate that about 75% of entry-level analyst job postings are now specifically asking for skills in a software tool, such as Python, R, or SQL. If your resume only displays theory, you are instantly disqualified.

This leads directly into a time problem, since there is a ticking clock that is working against you, counting down your advantage. We are only 30 days from the beginning of the New Year. The best analyst jobs are filled in the first weeks of Q1 2026, when budgets are fresh and firms are hiring fast. If you don’t have a hard skill certification in hand by January 1st, you’re in for a world of hurt in the huge glut of applicants that follows. You must not succumb to the fear of accepting a less competitive, lower-paying job. To get one of the top 15% of early jobs, you have to spend December learning an econometric tool such as EViews or a database language such as SQL.

December is the best month to reach out to people who already know your working habits. I find this approach for young professionals much more effective than submitting one hundred job applications blindly. It was the conversations that took my career to the next level when I first started developing my own practice. As I went through the process of building my career, the discussions that propelled me were frequently initiated by a simple update posted at the right time. Economics majors can achieve this by contacting past supervisors, professors, or internship contacts with a short, sincere note about what they are looking for or planning to do in the new year. Even a single short message to ten individuals can open more doors than one thousand online submissions.

I tell them to treat it as real preparation. Present one project that demonstrates clear thinking, even if it took no more than an hour to put together. People who do the hiring are known to be reflective, trusting, and persistent. This small step in December prepares you for the early hiring cycle in January.

In December, economics majors should update their resumes and online profiles to clearly show their skills and recent work, including internships or projects that demonstrate their ability to analyze data and economic trends. They must also research companies and industries to tailor their applications to what employers are looking for. Preparing practical examples of problem-solving and teamwork for interviews helps build confidence. Keeping a steady pace in applying for jobs, reaching out to contacts, and following up strengthens their chances of getting noticed. These simple but focused steps prepare them well for job opportunities that will open early in 2026.