Chemjobber Wayback Index: April 21, 2003

As part of Chemjobber's first-draft-of-history edition, I've decided to decamp to my local university library and look for old editions of C&EN. I picked 2003, 'cause that's when I remember older members of my group going straight to industry (no post-doc) with great pay and sign-on bonuses. Here's the issue from four years ago, today:

Industrial (non-academic, non-governmental) positions:

Total number of ads: 14

- Postdocs: 0
- Permanent positions: 39++
- Ratio of US/non-US: 39/0
Area: 2471

Governmental positions (US, international):
Total number of ads: 1
- Postdocs: 1+
- Permanent positions: 2
- Ratio of US/non-US: 2/0
Area: 117

Academic positions:
Total number of ads: 15
- Postdocs: 2
- Tenure-track faculty: 4
- Temporary faculty: 9+
- Lecturer positions: 1
- Staff positions: 1
- Area (square cm): 444

Okay, so it's not like it's news to anyone, but compared to 4 years ago, the job market sucks [insert your favorite noun here.] The Chemjobber Index for this issue (2471) is larger than any of the Index numbers for any issue of C&EN I've measured (since mid-2008), over twice the Index for the best showing of the Index and more than the last 5 or so combined. Whoa -- things REALLY were better back then. 

The most interesting tidbit? The ads were a who's-who of med chem: Lilly, Amgen, Exelixis, SGX, Merck, 3 from Bayer (I swear -- I've seen one Bayer ad in C&EN the past 2 years, it seems), Abbott and Roche. It was absolutely unreal -- pages and pages of ads. Well, maybe someday there will be that Big Rock Candy Mountain of ads in the back of C&EN once again.