The European Central Bank has launched: Traineeship in the Business Cycle Analysis 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: 11.02.2026
- understanding the implications monetary policy transmission, supply and demand conditions and uncertainty have for business cycle dynamics, as well as for households’ and firms’ spending, investment and saving decisions;
- developing nowcasting and short-term forecasting tools for economic activity, using state-of-the-art AI techniques;
- investigating the heterogeneity of households and firms in driving aggregate economic fluctuations, the impact of recent crises on the behaviour of households and firms, and the varying effects of monetary and fiscal policies;
- improving forecasting for the euro area and the largest euro area economies, including scenario analysis.
- support the Division with policy-relevant assignments, working closely with other members of your team and the Division’s economists;
- prepare tables and charts for internal and external reports, and presentations for Executive Board members and the Directorate General’s senior management in collaboration with other business areas;
- maintain and enhance the Division’s data infrastructure, including processing, consolidating and transforming datasets, maintaining and developing databases and visualisation tools and assisting in automating and adapting regular work processes;
- contribute to the formulation of policy advice to support policymakers and the Division’s broader economic assessments, using data analytics and statistical and econometric tools;
- contribute to the improvement of analytical, econometric and forecasting tools.
- a bachelor’s degree or higher in economics, statistics, data science or another relevant field;
- practical experience of working with databases, including data quality validation, and preparing charts and tables for reports and presentations;
- practical experience of working with statistical/econometric software such as Stata, Python, R, EViews and/or MATLAB;
- an interest in supporting policy advice through applied economic analysis;
- a good knowledge of the MS Office package, particularly Excel and PowerPoint
- 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 <https://www.coe.int/en/web/common-european-framework-reference-languages/table-1-cefr-3.3-common-reference-levels-global-scale> .
- experience in working with relational databases, using SQL and/or other big data analytics tools;
- experience in using and/or developing visualisation tools, such as R Shiny, Shiny for Python and/or Plotly/Dash;
- knowledge of, or experience in, data science (for example text analysis, machine learning or other advanced machine learning techniques);
- a good understanding of economic issues related to the household and corporate sectors, the business cycle and the current macroeconomic climate.


