How much am I worth? Senior economist, international European or US bank

A panel of specialist headhunters give their assessment of typical pay packages:Senior economist, international European or American bank: Salary 250,000, bonus up to 100%.

Trends seldom stay constant for long in the job market and nowhere has this been truer than in the ever-changing market for economists.

Not so long ago City of London practitioners of what the Victorian sage, Thomas Carlisle, so famously called "the dismal science" were paid a fortune to pronounce their views on the global economy, on whether interest rates, inflation or GDP would rise or fall, indeed on just about everything deemed to be important to the movement of equity or bond prices.

Financial houses of all descriptions fell over themselves to employ even green economics graduates out of college in the belief that clients - and their own traders - would listen to their pronouncements with awe. No longer, it would seem.

Only a fraction of people graduating with an economics degree become "straight economists" in the City most look at where they have the best chance of advancement - equity or fixed income research for example - and target that.

"The days of economists sitting in their ivory tower and putting out the occasional country report have long passed," says Tony Tucker, a headhunter at ERG and formerly a bank HR executive. He says even recently recruited economists now sit alongside traders on the trading floor. "They are much more geared to products than they used to be."

This change has meant many economists earn a salary commensurate with those earned by the people they sit alongside: junior economists can expect 50,000-60,000 basic with a salary of up to 100%, while top-tier economists at a prominent bank can earn a basic of 200,000-300,000 and a bonus again worth 100%, especially if they are involved with a particular area of product research.

Really top names at the likes of Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch - whose views can move markets and make governments stand up and listen - can expect even more, putting them over the 500,000 level.

However, the current downturn in City employment has taken a heavy toll amongst economists. One headhunter says the market is shrinking, with "dead wood" leaving the City and going off to sail a boat around the Mediterranean until things hopefully pick up again.

Recruitment consultants say however that many of those who have gone will not return.

"With the overt or covert recruitment freezes in place at many City firms, employers are shooting carefully, with a rifle they are determined to get the sort of people they want," says Ron Bradley of Jonathan Wren. He adds that the recruitment process for economists has become increasingly drawn out.

Recruitment consultants agree that with so much low-cost or free economic research available on the internet, economists need to bring much more added value than they used to.

This is reflected in the changing job market. Monima Siddique at City Analytics has identified at least four types of economist in the city the general macro-economist (a disappearing breed), a bond economist, a forex strategist - dealing in very short-term factors - and an equity strategist, who will typically look at industry trends, put these into a macro context and help equity analysts derive specific company recommendations.

Siddique says the big boom area at the moment is not so much in economists but in a separate, though related area: credit research analysis. This would disappoint a fully trained economist. as such a training is not essential to success in this field.

"There is simply not enough talent around," she says, noting that five or six years ago somebody with a good background, say at one of the ratings agencies, typically earning around 30,000 could today expect a lot, lot more.

"I recently heard of somebody being taken on for a guaranteed 600,000 for 18 months," she said. "Its all a simple case of too little supply and huge and growing demand."

As any economist would understand.

Figures and commentary by Jonathan Wren, City Analytics and ERG.