Official Statistics : Measuring For Understanding
Through the civil servant program, ENSAI prepares students for a family of scientific and technical professions centered around statistical engineering and IT systems. Within Insee and the French Ministerial Statistical Services, these professions offer dynamic, fascinating, and even international careers.
Join Insee
After two years of studies, in which most classes are in common with the engineering program, official statistics students join the workforce. At Insee the career of a civil servant can also be oriented towards applied mathematics, economic studies or computer science. Objective: collect, produce, analyze and share statistical information on the economy, society, and French territory.
Processed rigorously and methodically, this information is useful to public authorities and services, local government, social partners as well as to businesses, the media, researchers, teachers, students, and even private individuals. This data allows everyone to enrich their knowledge, carry out studies, and make predictions and decisions. In the midst of the Coronavirus crisis, the outlook on economic activity that Insee delivers every two weeks is especially important.
Having graduated from ENSAI in 2018, Valentin Guilloton, joined Insee’s general management where he now participates in the production of macroeconomic indicators in the banking-insurance sector. It’s his first position as a project manager, which he appreciates for the variety of work and subjects covered as well as the perspectives that it offers in the Official Statistics System at Insee or in French ministries.
Continued higher education studies with the Master of Science in Public Evaluation and Decision Making
Undecided when she was accepted as a student at ENSAI, Noémie Morenillas finally favored the civil servant program over the engineering degree. “For job security*, of course, but also and especially because I had a strong hankering for economic and social sciences, which are more present in official statistics.” At the end of the two-year track, Noémie continued on with the Master of Science in Public Evaluation and Decision Making offered by ENSAI in co-accreditation with the University of Rennes 1. “It’s a very rich Master’s from a methodological and technical point of view, it really enabled us to professionalize. Besides, today I have a Master’s degree, like engineers” indicated the young project manager who will complete her first position at Insee’s general management and soon join the regional directorate of Toulouse for a new mission linked to the aerospace sector.
Find more testimonials from ENSAI alumni on our Youtube channel.
Internationalization, Data Science and AI
Besides Insee, statistical offices are additionally present in French ministries: land use planning, demographics, health, culture, the environment, defense, justice, social affairs, etc. the scope of official statistics are immense and evolving. It is also possible to work in other prestigious institutions like the Bank of France, research centers or even Eurostat, the European Union’s Statistical Office. The Master’s in Public Evaluation and Decision Making at ENSAI is actually the only French degree that is certified as a European master in official statistics (EMOS), a label awarded by Eurostat.
In France and abroad, the powerful emergence of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence is drawing a new perspective for careers in statistics. To process new sources of data while respecting privacy protection, the need to turn to qualified expertise continues to grow. Working in official statistics means evolving in diverse and fascinating domains, at the heart of scientific, economic, and social challenges of tomorrow.
*Official statistics students have the French civil servant status and are paid about €1,550 (gross) per month during their studies at ENSAI.
KEYWORDS
Survey / Methodology / Survey Theory / Microeconomics / Macroeconomics / Demography / Cartography / Spatial statistics
CAREERS
Behind the term civil servant statistician hides a multitude of careers proposed by Insee or the public statistical system. Current graduates of ENSAI have jobs such as: statistical project manager, data scientist on crime and delinquency, statistical and cartographic software design engineer, head of surveys on R&D in higher education and health, head of French foreign trade circumstances, development analyst, head of statistical work and studies on business demographics, head of electricity surveys, HR data analyst for French Armed Forces, head of investment accounts of the French economy, head of the economic monitoring of Italy and Spain, methodologist for regional and local studies, quality expert on nominative social security declarations, industrial statistics analyst, etc.
Graduation ceremony for the civil servant class of 2019