The Chamot Statement, or why this man should have won the ACS presidency

From this week's C&EN, an essay from Dr. Dennis Chamot, the former candidate for ACS president full of rather remarkable comments:

Nevertheless, a global manufacturing enterprise with increasing international competition is here to stay. Unfortunately for chemical professionals, it’s not just shop-floor manufacturing and assembly jobs that have moved from the U.S. to Asia and other areas; in recent years the movement has included upper-level, sophisticated work such as chemical research, drug discovery, process design and development, and various levels of management. In addition, domestic capabilities have increased enormously in developing countries such as China, India, and Brazil, as has their output of homegrown scientists and engineers. 

What does all of this say about employment opportunities for U.S. chemists? Well, we are probably producing too many chemists for the traditional academic and industrial research labor market, at least for the foreseeable future. To come to any other conclusion would be indulging in empty rhetoric. Note that I did not say we are producing too many graduates with chemistry degrees—more on that later—but we need to be realistic... 

[snip] Growth in the U.S. will not be fast enough to make up for all of the lost positions in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries over the past few years, in part because many of these losses have not been solely determined by economic decline. Rather, there have been strategic shifts to place work in other countries, and there is no reason to expect those decisions to be reversed. 

The keys for many chemical professionals will have to be imagination and flexibility. I am a firm believer in the need for all citizens in modern technological societies to have a strong grounding in science and math, so I would never discourage anyone from pursuing a chemistry degree. What one thinks about doing with that background, though, should include much more than just scientific research. Chemists develop lots of skills, and those skills can be applied in medicine, high school teaching, forensics, science writing, legislative work, policy analysis, quality assurance, regulatory support, and more—much more than just R&D in universities or industry.

This is a groundbreaking comment for a member of the Board of Directors of the American Chemical Society to make; Dr. Chamot is to be praised and thanked for being willing to state such unpopular and unpleasant facts. I don't really have anything to add to it (other than a sense of skepticism at the alternative careers pathway).

While we can argue about the speed at which ACS and C&EN have approached the #chemjobs issue, it is becoming increasingly clear to me that many people are coming around to the same set of facts and all that remains (all!) is to discuss what is to be done about it. That's a start.