David specialises in regional forecasting techniques. In particular, he examines how industry trends feed through into regional employment and regional economic growth. This often involves detailed examinations of specific industries like construction, education, healthcare and tourism. He enjoys the process of continuously improving and refining our forecasting processes to make them more realistic and more accurate.

His areas of expertise include economics, econometrics, statistics, survey design, modelling and data management. His main strength is in making sense of complex systems and complex data: he uses statistical skills to break down and simplify topics that might otherwise be overwhelming. Some of his interests include time series econometrics, big data, and machine learning.

He started his career as a policy analyst, working on climate change and environmental issues, but soon found that his calling was in research and analysis. He was subsequently involved in research into a range of topics, including labour markets and transport economics. Past employers include the Ministry of Economic Development, (MED) the Labour Market Policy Group (LMPG) and Booz Allen Hamilton. In 2007 he started his own consultancy practice specialising in transport economics and econometrics. In 2015 he joined Infometrics and has been with us since then.

Since 2016 he has lived and worked as a digital nomad in various countries. During this time, he has travelled to Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Paraguay, Panama, and Aruba. His favourite country is Brazil, and he is fluent in Brazilian Portuguese. In February 2020, he made an impromptu decision to leave Brazil and to return to New Zealand. He has since returned to his nomadic ways. He currently lives somewhere in South America.