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GES Sandwich JD - OBR 2027
Office For Budget Responsibility (OBR)
Salary: £30,157
Number of placements: 1
Location: London
About the OBR
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) was established by the Chancellor in May 2010 to provide independent assessments of the economy, public finances, and fiscal sustainability. We provide independent forecasts of the economy and public finances to inform the Government's fiscal policy decisions, examine the impact of the Government's policy decisions on the public finances, and assess the prospects for achieving the Government's fiscal targets. We publish reports on long-term fiscal sustainability, fiscal risks, and trends in welfare spending, and run a wider work programme of research and analysis into economic and fiscal issues.
The OBR is comprised of the Budget Responsibility Committee (BRC) – Richard Hughes (Chair), Professor David Miles, and Tom Josephs – who are currently supported by around 50 civil servants, including economists, public finance analysts, and business support staff.
The Role
As we are a small organisation with a flat structure, the placement student roles will offer direct exposure to senior staff and the opportunities to work collaboratively, develop their analytical skills, and apply their academic knowledge of economic thinking in support of a range of the OBR objectives and liaise with stakeholders across government. Students are expected to go through a steep learning curve and to work independently from the offset. This includes:
Working with relatively little oversight but with a high degree of collaboration with others in the team to ensure output of the highest quality.
Taking responsibility for own actions, outputs and analysis while ensuring a high degree of communication, particularly with stakeholders.
Attending relevant seminars in order to gain wider context to government and current affairs as well as further developing skills.
Reading articles, economic journals and published papers in order to be more aware of a wider political and economic landscape.
Attending any relevant training to gain both broaden and deepen knowledge, including Excel and other statistical software courses.
Publication Management
Students are tasked with ensuring that the presentation of the OBR analysis follows the pre-determined format across all OBR publications. They are expected to be innovative in their formatting of charts and tables to manage their time efficiently and maximise quality. Specific tasks and responsibilities include:
Managing the charts and tables process and ensuring they are created to the correct specifications for all publications.
Creating new ways of presenting data to provide high-quality publications and maintain consistency across them.
Managing and updating the historical forecast database.
Corporate Objectives
Students support the OBR to achieve its corporate objectives. Specific tasks include:
Working effectively with their line manager by updating them on the progress of own work and flagging any emerging pressures and issues.
Working well within the team by being aware of roles and responsibilities of each team member.
Quality-assuring own and others’ analysis.
Working collaboratively to organise the OBR end of year party and maintaining (and updating as appropriate) a handover pack for future OBR students.
The successful candidate will be assigned to either the Fiscal or the Economy team. Depending on the candidate's experience, there may be opportunities to take on additional tasks or projects.
Job title: Fiscal student
Group: OBR
Team: Fiscal team (crosscutting)
Main duties/objectives
The fiscal team at the OBR creates the fiscal forecast for the UK public finances and produces further analysis on welfare trends and fiscal risks and sustainability. It’s made up of a collection of smaller teams each covering receipts, expenditure, welfare, risks and sustainability, and policy costings and devolved tax and spending. This means it is essential that the student manages their time effectively and can prioritise his/her tasks for multiple teams. Much of the work you do will be structured around the OBR’s publications, in particular the Economic and fiscal outlook (EFO) which accompanies the Budget and Spring Statement.
Further to the roles and responsibilities listed in the introduction, the responsibilities specific to the fiscal student post are:
Data management
A core part of the OBR process. Production of publications follows a rigorous and established process which tends to be time pressured with zero or very little flexibility over deadlines. It is therefore essential that students always work as effectively as possible and at a high standard. There is a considerable amount of responsibility trusted upon the student. Specific tasks include:
Produce the spending OBREAs (OBR economic assumptions) every fiscal forecasting round and work with senior colleagues to ensure that they are sent to departments on time and contain the correct figures.
Liaise with HMT/HMRC/BoE to analyse and forecast the financial sector profits determinants.
Produce smaller tax lines such as Passport fees, the British Transport police and Fines and penalties at each forecasting round, involving forecasting, making judgements and stakeholder engagement with the BRC
At the end of each forecast round, assist in preparing the note to the Chancellor for the Exchequer to update the HM Treasury on the forecast progress.
On the release of the monthly ONS public sector finances data: Update, manage and improve the published OBR databank, manage the receipts outturn database
Analytical
Provide analytical support for main OBR publications as needed (which include the Economic and fiscal outlook (EFO), the Fiscal risks and sustainability report (FRS), the Forecast evaluation report (FER) and the Welfare trends report (WTR)). This is a flexible part of the role, and depends on the student’s interests and the team’s current work priorities.
Specific projects that current/past post holders have completed include:
Producing ‘Forecast in depth’ pages – these are published on the OBR’s website and aim to provide an in-depth overview of each forecast line.
Producing the Scottish and Welsh property and landfill tax forecasts for the EFO and Devolved taxes and spending forecasts publications at each fiscal event, including relevant diagnostic tables and analysis of trends in the tax base.
Leading on the policy risks and uncertainties databases for the EFO at each fiscal event, engaging with internal and external stakeholders to ensure timely sign-off ahead of publication.
Conducting additional analysis and other ad-hoc tasks such as a standalone piece of analysis in a box for one of the publications.
While producing such analysis it is essential that the student:
Secures a balance between the time spent on producing such work and the actual output.
Ensures analysis is quality assured, written clearly and appropriately for the audience.
Adheres to the OBR writing style as well as following OBR best practice throughout.
Analysis should utilise any learnt techniques during the placement such as Excel tips and tricks in order to manage time efficiently and produce high quality charts to display data effectively.
The student should seek to exert influence through their work by sharing learnt insights to help inform and shape the wider analytical discussions. They should become aware of the wider context and how their work feeds into the publication as a whole.
Job title: Economy student
Group: OBR
Team: Economy team
Main duties/objectives
The economy team at the OBR creates the macroeconomic forecast for the UK economy. They produce an outlook for macroeconomic variables such as GDP, inflation, trade, unemployment and the housing market. Much of the work you do will be structured around the OBR’s publications in particular the Economic and fiscal outlook (EFO) which accompanies the Budget and Spring Statement.
Further to the roles and responsibilities listed in the introduction, the responsibilities specific to the economy student post are:
Data management
A core part of the OBR process. Production of publications follows a rigorous and established process which tends to be time pressured with zero or very little flexibility over deadlines. It is therefore essential that students always work as effectively as possible and at a high standard. There is a considerable amount of responsibility placed upon the student. Specific tasks include:
Taking “Market Assumptions” each forecast round using the Bloomberg terminal and other software to input directly into the macroeconomic forecast. These are variables such as market expectations for Bank Rate, oil prices and exchange rates.
Assist and lead parts of the housing forecast – including mortgage and deposit rates, housing supply and transactions forecast.
Undertaking short-term projects in a topic that interests you. This may include refining existing forecast models, developing econometric equations or assisting in our supply-side forecast.
At the end of each forecast round, assist in preparing the note to the Chancellor for the Exchequer to update the HM Treasury on the forecast progress.
Assist the economy team with the presentation of their analysis, including leading on formatting the charts and tables used in OBR publications.
Analytical
Provide analytical support for main OBR publications as needed (which include the Economic and fiscal outlook (EFO), the Fiscal risks and sustainability report (FRS) and the Forecast evaluation report (FER)). Specifically:
Providing analysis of these market assumptions for publication and internally (such as presenting to the Budget Responsibility Committee (BRC)).
Attending meetings with the Budget Responsibility Committee, HM Treasury, Bank of England (BoE) and other external contacts as appropriate.
Managing the data processing side of our analytical forecast comparison work, monitoring and comparing our forecast with the BoE and other external forecasters.
Update the website ‘Forecast in depth’ page for conditioning assumptions after each forecast.
Additional economic and other ad-hoc analysis as required.
In order to complete these tasks the student must:
Work collaboratively with other members of the team to deliver high quality outputs.
Be proactive in working effectively with line manager/s.
Manage their time effectively to meet strict deadlines. There will often be short notice from colleagues for delivery of outputs so the student must be on top of their workload.
Anticipate potential issues or requests from colleagues and external stakeholders by learning from past experience.
Ensure analysis is quality assured, written clearly and appropriately for the audience.
Adhere to the OBR writing style as well as following OBR best practice throughout.
Develop knowledge of the macro economy by reading OBR, ONS (Office for National Statistics) and BoE publications as well as attending relevant seminars and events such as those put on by the government student network and the GES.
Eligibility Requirements:
Individuals appointed to the OBR will be subject to satisfactory references, Civil Service Nationality Rules and National Security Vetting. To allow for meaningful checks to be carried out applicants will normally need to have lived in the UK for at least three out of the past five years.