Ultracold atoms confined in a dipole trap are submitted to a potential whose depth is proportional to the real part of their dynamic dipole polarizability. The atoms also experience photon scattering whose rate is proportional to the imaginary part of their dynamic dipole polarizability. In this article we calculate the complex dynamic dipole polarizability of ground-state erbium, a rare-earth atom that was recently Bose condensed. The polarizability is calculated with the sum-over-state formula inherent to second-order perturbation theory. The summation is performed on transition energies and transition dipole moments from ground-state erbium, which are computed using the Racah-Slater least-squares fitting procedure provided by the cowan codes. This allows us to predict nine unobserved odd-parity energy levels of total angular momentum J = 5, 6, and 7, in the range 25 000–31 000 cm$^{-1}$ above the ground state. Regarding the trapping potential, we find that ground-state erbium essentially behaves like a spherically symmetric atom, in spite of its large electronic angular momentum. We also find a mostly isotropic van der Waals interaction between two ground-state erbium atoms, characterized by a coefficient C$^{iso}_6$ = 1760 a.u. To the contrary, the photon-scattering rate shows a pronounced anisotropy since it strongly depends on the polarization of the trapping light.