Story Telling and The Economy

One of the world's top economists and Nobel Prize winner, Robert Shriller, recently published a book that makes a compelling argument supporting the value of English majors. Since 2008, college students have begun to abandon English and humanities majors in favor of STEM fields. Since the Great Recession, the National Center for Education Statistics recorded that English majors dropped by 25.5 percent. This is the largest decline for any major that has been recorded.

While many individuals may consider this shift for purposes of job security or earning a greater paycheck, their reasoning may not be fully backed by evidence which shows that although some STEM jobs make more money initially, that disappears as there is a fast turn over in the level of skill expected of individuals. In addition, English majors from ages 25 to 29 see a much lower unemployment rate than computer science and math majors. Many individuals from humanity backgrounds advance to higher-paying management jobs and by middle age, pay across majors is similar.

In his book, Shriller examines the importance of storytelling and its implications on the market and even an economy as a whole. He explores different stories that have driven economies. For example, the idea that emerged after WWII that connected the American Dream to the ownership of a house helped to drive the housing bubble. Shriller comments that traditional economics does not take into account how beliefs influence economic events. He believes that economics is a narrative and science can be enhanced by taking stories into account.

Markets can even be slightly manipulated through storytelling. As the global market slows to the lowest rate in a decade, central bankers around the world have worked to tell stories that keep confidence high, encouraging businesses to keep hiring and consumers to keep spending. The head of Australia's central bank even encouraged his colleagues to spend less time on the numbers and direct their focus to become good storytellers

As storytelling becomes an increasingly important aspect of the economy, the ability to communicate clearly to a variety of audiences is a skill that does not go out of mode.

https://www.dailyherald.com/business/20191019/top-economists-say-the-world-still-need-english-majors