1. HELPING CHEMISTS FIND JOBS IN A TOUGH MARKET. 2. TOWARDS A QUANTITATIVE UNDERSTANDING OF THE QUALITY OF THE CHEMISTRY JOB MARKET.
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| Screenshot from NPR's Planet Money |
What's the job market like for chemists? Dude -- it's always bad.*
How bad is it? How the heck should I know? Quantifying the chemistry job market is what this blog is about. That, and helping chemists find jobs.
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(*For the literal-minded, this is a joke. Mostly.)
since when is a Pfizer VP classified a 'chemist?' I guess that is one of those 'alternative' careers that people chase after they decide not to be a chemist anymore.
ReplyDeletehm...how accurate is the ACS starting salary study for 2009? I have a M.Sc. in Organic chemistry with 2 years experience and i only get 45-50k job offers. these numbers from ACS seem far fetched.
ReplyDeleteanon be glad you get any offers at all. You are competing with hundred thousand unemployed chemists with a similar qualification, and people who work for companies around Shanghai. There is an unmistakable air of desperation on the job market, and there will be always some dude eager to take your 45k offer.
ReplyDeleteYes, 45 k is a salary I had as a industry MS chemist in 1995-7, in a low-rent Arizona town, fresh from school, with a degree from Eastern Europe. It truly sucks. And yes, ACS surveys are worthless.
CJ...a question. The salaries you quote are for an experienced employee or start ups? Anyway I pay ACS due for reasons other than their useless and self serving survey. They help themselves and not the chemist, anyway.
ReplyDeletemilkshaken, 45k in 1995-7 was good. 45k now is considered low.
ReplyDeletequestion: what is the current going rate for a MS chemist with a few years of experience? How much are synthetic chemists going for now a days?
ReplyDeleteAfter being laid off by big pharma, I thought about going back to graduate school for a PhD... Only place nowadays were there is job security in chemistry! :-)
ReplyDelete2:09 -
ReplyDeleteIt depends on the size of the company and where you live. One will usually get a slightly better salary in Boston or San Fran versus, say, Indianapolis because of the cost of living.
I'm in pharma with 3 years of experience and making 60k. I had an offer 3 years ago from a very small company for 48k. A friend of mine got an offer in a mid-sized company in Boston for 62k. Another friend got an offer outside of Indianapolis for 55k with 4 years experience after being laid off by pharma.
45k-60k is probably a reasonable range for someone now with <5 years of experience.
As seen in CJ's chart, someone quite experienced, say, an R3 or R4 at Pfizer could be making 70-80k. But BS/MS R3 and R4 are usually folks with >10 years of experience.
You'll likely get more low-ball offers nowadays since the market sucks for synthetic chemists.
Hope this helps.
@5:39-very helpful! thank you. :-)
ReplyDeleteACS salary numbers are flat out laughable. I've never come close to reaching the salaries they claim are average relative to the level of education that they list. Not all chemists belong to the ACS and the more likely than not, the ACS members that do respond to salary surveys are the ones making more money. My salary has done nothing by decrease with more experience. Right out of college with a BS I was making $51 after 4 years experience. Right now I only make $40k in a horrible job. At this rate, I'll only have to work another decade and a half to reach the salary where I used to be right out of college. What a joke. Science is a complete waste of time and money. I regret every single day wasting money to go to college instead of becoming an electrician.
ReplyDeleteChemistry, science in general, is a terrible career. I spent 6 years to get an MS chemistry and i dont even have a job. The last job i had, i made 18/h. ACS is either fudging the salary numbers or just disconnected from the job market.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the point of ACS exactly? I had been a member for years but refused to renew in 2009 for a variety of reasons...it was much too much money per year for little, if any return/benefit, and the politics involved in the society just infuriated me to the point that I didn't want to waste my money anymore. ACS seems to be mainly for academics and high-level/CEO/VPs in industry...for the rank and file industrial chemist, it's worthless. Am I wrong?
ReplyDeleteIt is my dream to work in a lab, but nobody wants a fresh graduate with a B.S degree. T.T
ReplyDeletebig pharma, Boston/Cambridge,
ReplyDeleteMS, 8+ yrs: >$90k plus bonus
PhD, starting: $100k plus bigger bonus
PhD, 5 yrs: $115-120k plus even bigger bonus
not too shabby