This bad news from C&EN (article by Alexander Tullo, emphasis mine):
...BASF, the world’s largest chemical maker, wrapped up its earnings season posting a 2.9% decline in 2025 sales and a 38.8% drop in earnings from the previous year. Sales volumes increased for all its businesses except basic chemicals, but prices and currency exchange rates worked against the German firm.
Eastman Chemical cut costs by about $100 million in 2025 and is planning to shed another $125 million–$150 million in expenses this year. Despite that, Eastman’s earnings sunk by 32.7% in 2025 to $627 million, on a 6.5% decline in sales over 2024 values.
Eastman CEO Mark Costa vented his frustrations about the economy to analysts in a conference call. “Everyone’s talking about how great GDP is and its growth last year. [But] if you back out data centers, [artificial intelligence], health care, GDP is sort of flat,” he said, referring to the US gross domestic product. “Eighty percent of our consumers out there are really struggling with the economic challenges they have and the affordability, the fear of what tariffs are going to do, fear about ‘Can I get a new job if I lose mine?’ ”
This more or less confirms what we've known, i.e. things aren't so great for the chemical industry right now. It's not a major source of jobs for entry-level chemists, I suspect, but this doesn't bode well for employment in that sector.
