Traineeship in the Prices and Costs Division

General Information

Type of contract Traineeship

Who can apply? EU nationals eligible for our traineeship programme

Grant The trainee grant is €1,170 per month plus an accommodation allowance (see further information section)

Working time Full time

Place of work Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Closing date

Your team

You will be part of the Prices and Costs Division in the Directorate General Economics.

The Prices and Costs Division monitors, analyses and assesses inflationary pressures in the euro area. The Division provides input for policy processes and external communication on the inflation outlook and potential risks, including those derived from cyclical and structural analysis, the external and domestic environment, wage and profit developments and projected expectations. The Division works closely with other business areas across the ECB and the broader Eurosystem.

In your role as trainee, you will be part of a vibrant team of professionals. You will work alongside our experienced economists in enhancing analytical tools, preparing policy documents, conducting empirical analysis and contributing to publishable policy work.

The ECB is an inclusive employer and we strive to reflect the diversity of the population we serve. We encourage you to apply irrespective of age, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, race, religious beliefs, sexual orientation or other characteristics.

Your role

As a trainee, you will:

• process, consolidate and transform datasets, maintain and develop databases and visualisation tools (including interactive dashboards), and use microdata to monitor inflation and real economic developments;
• contribute to the Division's regular internal and external products (including the Economic Bulletin and macroeconomic projections), for instance by preparing tables and charts for reports, spreadsheets or PowerPoint presentations, in collaboration with other business areas;
• support policy decision-making by conducting empirical analyses using data analysis and statistical and econometric tools, particularly MATLAB, Stata and R;
• contribute to enhancing and expanding analytical, econometric and forecasting tools;
• support micro-level analysis of wage and price inflation, for example by contributing to the ECB's wage tracker, by assessing micro-level developments in wage dynamics and consumer prices (including expectations) and/or helping to analyse price-setting, working with large datasets based on different sources (including from web scraping and large text corpora).

This traineeship offers you excellent opportunities to enhance your quantitative and programming skills, work on analytical tasks and collaborate with experienced central bank economists. It is also a unique opportunity to gain insight into analysis and policy within a central bank, which will be of great value in your future career. You will be part of a multicultural team that strives for continuous innovation to make a positive impact on the lives of European citizens.

Qualifications, experience and skills

Essential:

• a bachelor's degree or higher in economics, econometrics, mathematics, statistics, data science or another relevant field;
• practical experience of working with complex datasets, preparing charts and tables for reports and presentations, and ensuring data quality;
• a good knowledge of multiple statistical and econometric analysis using programming languages such as MATLAB, R, Python, or Julia or statistical and econometric software such as Stata;
• a good knowledge of the MS Office package;
• an advanced (C1) command of English and an intermediate (B1) command of at least one other official language of the EU, according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.

Desired:

• a master's degree in economics, econometrics, mathematics, statistics, data science or another relevant field;
• a broad knowledge of macroeconomics and economic issues relating to wage and price developments;
• experience working on analytical projects (alone or as part of a team);
• a good knowledge of MS Excel and PowerPoint;
• a solid background in econometrics (in particular, time series econometrics, panel data econometrics and micro-econometrics) or statistics and data science (for example, natural language processing, web scraping and machine learning);
• practical experience of working with potentially large-scale microdata and using SQL;
• practical experience of using data visualisation tools (for example creating web interactive web applications);
• exposure to version control software such as Git.

You are curious and eager to learn, and want to further develop your ability to analyse complex information. You are keen to collaborate with others, pursue team goals and learn from other people's diverse perspectives. You strive to know and anticipate stakeholder needs, and will signal any need for change and propose alternative solutions.

You are motivated to contribute to the ECB's mission, to serve the citizens of the EU as a member of a public institution and to work with colleagues from all over Europe. You are keen to be part of our team and to use your skills and competencies to achieve the aims of this position.

Further information

Initial traineeship of six months, with a possible extension to up to 12 months in total, with starting dates in the spring and summer of 2026 and on 1 January 2027.

Other details on the conditions applicable to traineeships at the ECB can be found on our website.

Application and selection process

The recruitment process for this position will include an online interview.

Further information on how to apply is available on our website.

If you are not selected for this position but are still considered suitable, you will be placed on a reserve list for 12 months from the closing date for applications, from which you might be considered for other traineeship positions within the ECB.