Job Prospects for Finance and Accounting Students

Finance is a broad term encompassing concepts regarding the study, development, management, and investment of financial resources. Financial theories are the building blocks of the practice of banking and the study of financial institutions. Finance theory considers several questions, some of which are: How much is one willing to risk for a given amount of money? What is the best method of managing funds? Is finance a science or an art? How does value vary according to the degree of risk and investment?

There are three main subcategories of finance. The first is retail financing. Retail finance refers to those activities that deal with lending money directly to consumers. It includes shopping, bill paying, and buying stocks and bonds. The second subcategory of finance is commercial banking. This refers to the wide range of activities performed by banks other than lending money.

Economics is the study of how people, institutions, and firms create, manage, and redistribute wealth. Unlike the broad discipline of finance, economics does not attempt to predict how a specific investment will perform. Instead, economics explores the impacts of changes in the supply of, demand for, and price of assets and goods on the production, distribution, and consumption of these goods and services. Unlike the broad discipline of finance, economics attempts to explain why certain economic activities occur. One example of this is how changes in the availability of credit affect the decisions of firms to choose which businesses to invest in.

Quantitative analysis is the study of such financial transactions as stock market investments, bonds, equities, derivatives, mutual funds, and the index funds that carry them. The chief goal of the quantitative analysis is to provide information about the relationships among economic variables and their relationships with one another. Because the valuation of securities requires sophisticated computer models, quantitative analysis must be done periodically. There are a number of quantitative journals that publish research findings from a variety of fields and across a range of perspectives.

Accounting is another area of study that relates to economics and its workings. Accountants conduct financial accounting and prepare financial statements for public companies, corporations, and other entities. Because accountants are required to use a number of different techniques and methods, their job prospects in the field are diverse. Accountants who learn to use computers to perform their job prospects may find that their job prospects are strong with a number of accounting firms that focus on financial accounting.

Finally, there are a number of government agencies that focus on analyzing and disseminating statistical data in order to help society. One type of data that is often disseminated by these government agencies is labor statistics. Labor statistics help researchers understand how various demographics affect the availability of jobs, what kind of jobs are available, and how those available jobs are being occupied.