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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| Adapted from table 48 of the 2016 Survey of Earned Doctorates |
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.)
Is there data on how long people typically do a post doc? and How much do they make once they are done? That is of course assuming there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
ReplyDeleteThere's a ton of variability to this answer.
DeleteAnecdotally, I worked at an institution that gave us the NIH minimum. We were affiliated with a university that paid their postdocs significantly less because it was a low cost of living area.
I'm an organic chemist and my postdoc was 2 yrs long. This was considered typical at the time. However, that was before the US economy tanked in 2008. Every other postdoc in my group had done more than one postdoc, so they'd spent between 3-6 yrs doing postdoc work. This is very long for organic chemists and I believe it does impact your future job prospects. That attitude may be changing because of how common long/multiple postdocs have become, but I don't know for sure.
The biology/biochem people were different. Their average postdoc length was closer to 5-6 yrs. I hope they didn't do multiple postdocs, but if the organic chemists did then I'm betting some of them did too.
While I was searching for jobs the best offers were in the $80-90K range to start. This was a relatively universal number, regardless of location. I ended up taking a job in a hub area to be closer to the action, but often wonder how much healthier my bank account would be if I'd taken one of the jobs in a lower COL area.
Again, I was the only postdoc from my group to get a job after my 1st appointment. My situation is the exception, not the norm.
SeeArOh did a rudimentary analysis of postdoc length for people who go into faculty positions
Deletehttp://justlikecooking.blogspot.com/2015/06/how-long-are-postdoctoral-fellowships.html
This doesn't capture those who do not go into faculty positions. From my own experiences with meeting folks, a typical postdoc is 2-3 years long, and rarely would one choose to do a second postdoc by choice if they were aiming for a non-faculty position.
To make everybody on this blog feel better, I am a 55-yr old post-doc, have been so ever since I lost my job in a start-up way back in 2001, currently making $47 K a year, but in a low COL area.
ReplyDeleteNegative: low pay, not enough to raise a family. Positive: continuous employment since 2001. Because of the later, and seeing how destructive unemployment is on savings, Im not sure I would have been better off it I got a "good" job, even if I were lucky enough to be offered one...
No doubt chemists and chemistry are treated as horse manure and I blame ACS for underselling us.
ReplyDeleteI don't know. In 1977 my UCLA post doc salary was $7800 or a CPI adjusted $31,000 today. I had an ill stay at home spouse with lots of medical bills, a 4 year old kid and student loan payments. The equivalent of $42k seems great from a 1977 perspective.
ReplyDeleteNot to try and diminish your experience at all, but there's a lot more to take into account than inflation. For example, medical costs have increased significantly since 1977. Considering the cost of living in LA today, 42,000 truly is a pittance and I dare say that what you achieved in 1977 would be impossible today.
DeleteHere's a good example of "postdoctoral fellow" being abused as a title: https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Danimer-Scientific/jobs
ReplyDelete12-month contract with possibility for 12 month extension or -dangling carrot- conversion to permanent staff. Reading the description and responsibilities, the position is completely equivalent to a staff position. No independent research, no publishing, etc, that are hallmarks of a fellowship. We as chemists really need to consider what a postdoc should and shouldn't be. I suspect the current abuse is depressing wages and opportunities for longer-term employment. It reminds me of the unpaid "internships" the publishing industry has come to rely on. In keeping with hiring "postdoc fellows" to do scientific staff work, I suppose the next step would be bringing on non-PhD new graduates as "apprentices" to play the role of technicians.