From the newest projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook comes the numbers for predicted chemist employment in 2020. As you can see, chemical manufacturing is slated to suffer a 5.7% drop in chemist employment over the next 8 years. Basic chemical manufacturing (-15.1%), pesticide, fertilizer and other agricultural chemical manufacturing (-22.2%) and paint manufacturing (-11.3%) seem slated for especially large drops.
Pharmaceutical manufacturing, it appears, will drop slightly (-0.7%).
BLS, of course, does its very best job to stay on top of these numbers. But it's
Best wishes to all of us.
BLS does *its* very best.
ReplyDeleteI donate this typo-find to a non-anon person.
It's the only point of the week so far, I believe.
DeleteAre we going to see a rush of chemists to plastics?
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of the BLS numbers.... Riddle me this, according to BLS there're 82,000 chemists, there're probably around 23,000 grad students and 5,000 postdocs (from 2009 data), so 110,000 altogether. Let's assume that 50% of them are ACS members, that's 55,000. ACS has 164,000 members, who are the other 109,000?
ReplyDelete"Chemist" does not encompass everyone with a chemistry degree. Professors aren't chemists, biologists aren't chemists, all the sales people, tech support, etc. aren't chemists according to the BLS, but all can be ACS members.
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