GES Sandwich JD- HO 2027

Home Office (HO) 

Grade: Administrative Assistant 

Salary: £33,050 (London) ; £29,050 (national) 

Number of placements: 2 

Location: London, Manchester and Sheffield

Job Description – Home Office 

Holidays: 25 days + public and privilege holidays.  

The Home Office (HO) leads a diverse and high-profile portfolio of work-streams, which provides its economists with a unique and exciting opportunity to apply economic thought and analysis to solve some of society's most pressing problems. The policy areas we cover are crucial both to people’s lives and the effective functioning of the country. What you work on in the Home Office will be individual to you, but its guaranteed to be at the forefront of keeping the UK safe from those who seek to do it harm.  

Economists within the department are responsible for economic policy appraisal, providing support to transformational delivery; as well as providing the economic analysis that underpins the Home Office’s multi-million-pound investment decisions. This analysis is key in ensuring the realisation of the Department’s vision for a United Kingdom that is secure and prosperous, where citizens, residents and visitors are safe, and feel safe, to go about their lawful business.  

Successful candidates will be placed throughout the Home Office. Different teams face different analytical challenges depending on the policy area which they focus on: 

Central Economics Unit (CEU)  

Led directly by the Chief Economist and Head of Economic Appraisal, the CEU is a central function which leads on cross-cutting strategic economic analysis and driving up standards for quality assurance and economic appraisal across the economist community. Economists here assess and support business cases underpinning our major spending decisions, provide cross-cutting analysis to support fiscal events such as Spending Reviews; and support senior-level decision making. 

Migration Advisory Committee 

The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC)  is an independent non-departmental public body (NDPB), established in 2007, to carry out independent reviews and provide evidence-based immigration policy advice to the Government. The MAC’s independent advice has been highly influential in shaping both immigration policy and the wider migration debate in the UK.  

The postholders will play an influential role in the development of MAC recommendations on UK migration policy and will help deliver cutting-edge research (undertaken internally or via external commissioning) to advance the evidence base on migration.  

Asylum & Immigration Economics  

As a student economist in Immigration enforcement, you will work across multi-disciplinary teams to enhance the evidence base and influence senior managers across the Immigration Enforcement landscape. The analytical work in Immigration enforcement is quite varied and likely to cover economic appraisal (business cases and impact assessments), developing immigration enforcement related appraisal values and modelling tools, impact evaluations and developing evidence and modelling tools to support decision making across immigration enforcement.  

Drugs, Exploitation & Abuse Analysis  

The Drugs Exploitation and Abuse Analysis (DEAA) Unit is a growing, multi-disciplinary unit of over 50 analysts. Our work focuses on a range of crimes including drugs trafficking, modern slavery, child sexual exploitation, hate crime, violence against women and girls, firearms trafficking and anti-social behaviour, in addition to alcohol policy.  

Our work seeks to provide insight into how prevalent these crimes are, how many victims and offenders are involved, trends over time, what works in terms of reducing these crimes, how much they cost the UK, and the cost and benefit impacts of measures seeking to counter them. 

Managed Migration Analysis  

Managed Migration Analysis (MMA) is a unit working on regular migration routes (e.g., work, family, and study routes), and undertakes analysis to inform policy and operational decisions in the Home Office and across Whitehall.  

Homeland Security Analysis and Insight 

HSAI is the only analytical function directly supporting the Homeland Security Group (HSG), in an area where there has historically been a greater emphasis on intelligence assessment of the threat, so the unit plays a crucial role in the system particularly with regards to work understand risk more broadly, the impact on interventions, value-for-money and performance. The unit uses innovative analytical techniques to improve the evidence base and support business cases, impact assessments and supporting decision making. 

Dependent on the role allocated, successful students will: 

Apply economic theory and analysis to help inform evidenced-based policy solutions to crucial challenges faced by the UK today. 

Help to drive evidence-based policymaking across the department, championing value for money for the taxpayer and in meeting ministerial goals. 

Build expertise in relevant statistical tools such as Excel, STATA, and SPSS. 

Work both independently and collaboratively with a range of colleagues and stakeholders on an array of projects, with potential to collaborate with other government departments.  

Join a community of over 100 economists, benefitting from a strong economist network with monthly economist meetings and knowledge-sharing sessions. 

Gain access to seminars led by experts in academia and a wide range of internal training courses. 

Benefit from being a part of a wider analytical community – Home Office Analysis and Insight (HOAI) – which has a vision is to be a centre of excellence for professional analysts, delivering high-quality analysis for the Department whilst also working across areas of technical and subject-matter expertise and drawing on a range of sources to provide ground-breaking insights.  

Eligibility Requirements 

Candidates must meet the Security Clearance (SC) vetting requirements – this requires a 5-year UK footprint. Candidates must have been living in the UK continuously for the past 5 years, in which time they cannot have been abroad for 3 months or more at any given time.