Jobs related to economic/market research?

I've spent the past few years bouncing around jobs that I didn't like. I was an economics major in college and did a master's in applied economics after that, mainly because this was the early 2010s and the job market wasn't great, I didn't know what I wanted to do, and "more school" was a socially acceptable option at the time. I tried applying to research positions at the Federal Reserve and Treasury but all of those jobs required having or pursing a PhD. I ended up working as a legal secretary for a few years, thought I might want to go to law school but ended up hating the work. Then I spent a few years doing quality assurance at a software company; it was tedious. I left that job three years ago and ended up getting a job as the office manager of a small medical clinic; I hate it and COVID has only made things worse.

The problem is that I'm 33 years old and never found an actual "career" that I like and can grow in. I feel like everyone I went to school with is now an "associate" something or "vice president" of something and meanwhile I've never made more than $55K/yr in my life. I'm not "experienced" in anything but I'm too old for most entry-level positions. 

I like doing research and when I follow financial markets, I always end up being more interested in learning more about a company's place in its particular industry (how competitive the market is; how demographics and macroeconomic indicators impact it; what kind of horizontal or vertical integration there is) than about its actual stock price.

How do people actually get into doing that type of work? It seems like the closest things to what I'm talking about are companies like Gartner and IHS Markit.