NYT: Pharmacist pay not keeping up with inflation

Via the New York Times: 

...Yet pay for pharmacists, who typically spend six or seven years after high school working toward their professional degree, fell nearly 5 percent last year after adjusting for inflation. Dr. Poole said her pay, about $65 per hour, did not increase in more than four years — first at an independent pharmacy, then at CVS.

...But by the 2010s, the market for pharmacists was cooling thanks to some of the same factors that have weighed on other middle-class professions. Large chains such as Walgreens and CVS were buying up competitors and adjacent businesses like health insurers.

This consolidation generated large fees for workers at the top of the income ladder — financiers and corporate lawyers — but slowed the growth of retail outlets where pharmacists could find employment. After striking a deal in 2017 to acquire roughly 2,000 Rite Aid stores, Walgreens shut down more than 500 locations. It closed a few hundred more over the next three years.

Automation has further reduced demand for workers — many pharmacists now spend far less time processing insurance claims because software does it for them....

We've been covering the lack of a great job market for pharmacists for a while. It is surprising to me that there hasn't been a turnaround in the last number of years, but I suppose "continuing on trend" shouldn't be a surprise either. Definitely something for educators who work with pre-pharmacy students to think about... 

Interesting comparison between an automotive technician and a Ph.D. organic chemist

From friend of the blog James Ashenhurst, a very interesting letter to the editor from the Wall Street Journal about the trades:

We have one son who graduated from MIT with a Ph.D. in organic chemistry after a total of nine years of college. We have another son who graduated from WyoTech with degrees in Automotive Technology and Management after a two-year program right after high school. After five years at their respective jobs, which both thoroughly employ their respective educations, guess which one makes more money? Trade school wins. 

Bronwyn Clear

Proud parents, I bet.

(I suspect the income lines will cross at the 10 year or 20 year mark, but there's no guarantee, I suspect. Also, it depends on whether the MIT son became an academic.)  

Well, that's one way to get hired

Via a random set of clickings, I learned today that longshoremen in New York take Good Friday off, as well as a day in March called Gleason's Birthday, in honor of Thomas Gleason, a particularly influential President of the International Longshoremen's Association. From his New York Times obituary:

He always felt that his greatest achievement as president of the I.L.A. was the guaranteed annual income he won for union members, beginning in 1964. This allowed hundreds of longshoremen to collect as much as $32,000 a year for doing no work after their jobs were eliminated by containerization, a process in which goods are shipped in large containers so that the need for workers to load and unload is substantially reduced.  

Although costly, the guaranteed income was preferred by both the shipping industry and the union to the old shape-up when dock work was day labor, when 7 to 10 men would bid for each job each morning and who got the job was often determined by kickbacks and violence.

That doesn't sound very fun.

Why place matters

From an anonymous reader, a Boston-area Amgen recruiting billboard. I have seen this for coders, but never for "biotech professionals."

(Of course, I've only lived in one of BioSpace's "hotbeds.")

(12 "hotbeds"?!?!? You gotta be kidding me.) 

Pity the physicists

Via Science Careers, a rather familiar-sounding set of tales about young particle physicists and what they're doing to find a job: 

Young particle physicists face a job crunch that some older physicists have predicted for years. In 2010, researchers at the European particle physics laboratory, CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland, started taking data with the world's largest atom smasher, the 27-kilometer-long Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Last year, to great fanfare, the LHC blasted into existence the long-sought Higgs boson, the last piece in physicists' theory of the known particles, the standard model. But the huge teams working on the LHC have also cranked out hundreds of Ph.D.s, and with particle physics budgets in the United States and Europe stagnating, there aren't enough academic positions to accommodate them all. 

Within the particle physics community, young researchers themselves are drawing attention to the problem. Over the past 10 months, particle physicists in the United States have conducted a planning exercise that culminated recently in a 9-day retreat at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, called "Snowmass on the Mississippi"—after the ski resort in Colorado where physicists used to gather. The grassroots Snowmass Young Physicist Movement (YPM) conducted an online poll and held more than a dozen town hall meetings to find out what graduate students, postdocs, and untenured faculty members are thinking. "For young particle physicists the issues are jobs, jobs, jobs," says Bjoern Penning, 34, a postdoc at the University of Chicago and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois, and a co-convener of the Snowmass YPM. 

Young particle physicists say their older colleagues are generally supportive, but don't always fully appreciate their predicament. "I think the senior people, they actually think that if you work very hard, you'll make it, because they made it," says Marcelle Soares-Santos, 31, a postdoc at Fermilab who works on a cosmology project known as the Dark Energy Survey. But that's hardly the case, she says: "We don't control all the variables."

What I found interesting about the article was the seeming understanding amongst young physicists that they would be relatively unlikely to find a position within academic or government laboratory physics. The numerical odds are slim:

The numbers make the problem clear. In 2007, the year before CERN first powered up the LHC, the lab produced 142 master's and Ph.D. theses, according to the lab's document server. Last year it produced 327. (Fermilab chipped in 54.) The two largest particle detectors fed by the LHC, the A Toroidal LHC Apparatus (ATLAS) and the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS)—which both independently spotted the Higgs—boast teams of 3000 and 2700 physicists. By themselves, the CMS and ATLAS teams minted at least 174 Ph.D.s last year. That abundance seems unlikely to vanish anytime soon, as last year ATLAS had 1000 grad students and CMS had 900. 

In contrast, the INSPIRE Web site, a database for particle physics, currently lists 124 postdocs worldwide in experimental high-energy physics, the sort of work LHC grads have trained for.

Yikes! At least younger Ph.D. chemists have postdocs to keep a roof over their head... but is that just delaying the transition?  

A very confused paragraph at U.S. News on pre-meds

On gender/racial diversity myths in STEM (emphasis mine):

It's common to hear sweeping generalizations among STEM advocates about the lack of diversity and interest across all STEM fields. One educator took aim at this idea in a Tuesday panel discussion at the U.S. News Stem Solutions 2013 conference. 

"Not all STEM fields are created equal," said Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College. "If I look at biology and chemistry classes, they are probably about 60 percent female, and there are a lot of students of color in those classes." 

That sounds like a great thing, but Klawe cautioned that there is not job market demand for all of those students once they graduate. "They all think they're going to be doctors and the vast majority of them will not become doctors," she said. 

While these students have advanced science skills, they may not command the same salary and employer interest as a computer programmer. Women and students of color are least represented in computer science, electrical engineering, and computer engineering, said Klawe.

One imagines that President Klawe was referring to the difficulty in achieving entry into medical school; the reporter seems to have missed that one.

[If I were cynical, I would note that a not-insignificant portion of chemical and biological academia is involved in training pre-meds who will not become physicians. It is not a wonder that the upper-level majors courses seem to be more desirable for faculty to teach, as opposed to Chemistry 201.]

I would not tell a group of pre-meds "Hey, if you don't make it into med school, go become a chemist!" However, I would tell a group of pre-meds, "hey, you should think about the computer skills of the future, and try to get some of them." Readers, how about you?  

Physician versus chemist: no contest

UK chemist Jess wrote a worthwhile post, with her own twin study with an n of 1:

The odds of becoming an identical twin are around three in one thousand and I am one of those lucky three. Throughout the twenty eight years of mine and my twin sister’s life we have constantly been compared to each other in looks, personality and brain power. Abigail is a trainee general practitioner (GP) which means that she has completed her medicine degree (5 years) and subsequent foundation training (2 years). I am an organic chemistry postdoc, having completed my MChem. undergraduate degree (4 years) and PhD (3.5 years) in chemistry. Considering that the training for our respective roles has been a very similar amount of time, you may or may not be surprised to find that our lives and career prospects are very different.

Naturally, the post goes where you think it does. It is worth noting that the difference between physician salaries in the UK and the US is quite significant, with US physicians basically making the most money globally. Read the whole thing. 

A nursing surplus?

From last June, noted employment commentator and Wharton professor Peter Capelli on nursing jobs (my emphasis):

Community colleges are jammed with people who’ve already got college degrees, people trying to get practical degrees. The nursing shortage is no longer. Even the employers have said there’s no shortage of nurses now, because so many people were chasing those certificates and those degrees and those learning experiences. 

Thanks to @CoulombicExplosion, I see some confirmation for that opinion this week via CNN:

About 43% of newly licensed RNs still do not have jobs within 18 months after graduation, according to a survey conducted by the American Society of Registered Nurses. "The process has become more and more discouraging, especially since hospitals want RNs with experience, yet nobody is willing to give us this experience," said Ronak Soliemannjad, 26, who has been searching for a nursing job since she graduated in June.

They interview Professor Peter Buerhaus, a registered nurse and a health economist, who has an interesting hypothesis:

Prior to the recession, about 73,000 nurses left the profession each year due to childbearing, retirement, burning out or death. But when the recession hit, spouses lost jobs, 401(k)s lost money, and facing financial uncertainty, fewer nurses chose to leave work, Buerhaus said. "Many of those nurses are still in the workforce, and they're not leaving because we don't see a convincing jobs recovery yet," Buerhaus said. "They're clogging the market and making it harder for these new RNs to get a job."

My thoughts on the CNN piece:

• Profound sympathies to young nurses, who are getting into a tough field because of practical reasons. I suspect a lot of nurses will be moving to fairly remote places to do healthcare; that's not fun. 
• Buerhaus' working hypothesis is that nursing employment is counter-cyclical; that nursing employment is high when unemployment is high and vice-versa. His NEJM paper from 2012 indicates he thinks that nursing employment will trend back down as the economy improves. I'll be frank, I'm skeptical, because I'm waiting for other shoes to maybe drop in 2013. 
• That said, those same shoes (slowdowns in China, overall middling GDP growth in the US (predicted to be 1.5 or 2%), a crummy UK/Europe economy) were supposed to drop in 2012. 
• Buerhaus' NEJM paper seems to say that it's possible to have 2 problems: a short-term pop in the supply of nurses and a long-term shortage as the US population ages and demands more healthcare. 
• I wonder how that might apply to chemistry? 
• If you go to the American Society of Registered Nurses, you'll see a "Save the Grads" program. It's a program to locate entry-level positions exclusively for young nurses. It'd be pretty darn great if other professional societies, say, the American Chemical Society, would be willing to do the same thing. 

Readers, thinking about nursing? (Get some good shoes.) 

C&EN: Opportunities in materials science

From this week's C&EN, a look at career opportunities in materials science by Shawna Williams:

The numbers bear this out: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects that the materials science field will grow by just over 10%—around 900 jobs—between 2010 and 2020, compared with 4% growth in chemistry jobs. But delving deeper into the BLS numbers, it’s clear there’s a significant shift under way in the field, with consulting, research and development, and academic positions on the rise, while most jobs in manufacturing are expected to decline. 

Despite these changes, and the weak economy, heads of materials science departments around the country report that their graduates have, by and large, continued to find employment in recent years....  

[snip] Today, some of the hottest areas are gallium nitride and its role in solid-state lighting; oxide semiconductors, which hold promise for electronics; hybrid structures of organic and inorganic components, which are ultralightweight or have unusual mechanical, thermal, or energetic properties; additive manufacturing, in which products are made in layers by a printerlike machine; and energy-related materials such as organic photovoltaics and thermoelectrics, according to UCSB’s Pollock. 

Dow Corning is looking to fill positions in specialties such as ceramics, solid-state chemistry, and metallurgy, according to Michele Stafford, a recruiter with the firm. In addition, she says, “we have a large need for materials scientists who have a focus on doing device development. Not only would they synthesize the materials, but they would look at how those materials fit into electronic devices.”  

The competition among companies for scientists with the right backgrounds—whether they’re old hands or newly minted Ph.D.s—is quite stiff, says Dow Corning’s recruiting manager for North America, Jason Saavedra. In response, many firms partner with universities and offer internships to cultivate relationships with students doing research in desired areas, he says.

Not to be particularly repetitive on this point, but I find it amusing and irritating that department heads cannot simply tell Ms. Williams what the employment rate of their graduates is.

(I wonder who Dow Corning is working with?)

I want to be a rogue chemist

Via Felix Salmon, some fairly interesting tidbits about MF Global (the now-bankrupt commodity trading firm) and its CEO, John Corzine. Apparently, he was personally doing trades with his firm's money:

Not to be outdone, Mr. Corzine was the most profitable trader in that team, known as the Principal Strategies Group, according to a person briefed on the matter. Mr. Corzine traded oil, Treasury securities and currencies and earned in excess of $10 million for the firm in 2011, the person said… 

His obsession with trading was apparent to MF Global insiders over his 19-month tenure. Mr. Corzine compulsively traded for the firm on his BlackBerry during meetings, sometimes dashing out to check on the markets. And unusually for a chief executive, he became a core member of the group that traded using the firm’s money. His profits and losses appeared on a separate line in documents with his initials: JSC…

It's difficult to think what this would be like at a pharma company; it'd be as if the CEO of Merck or Pfizer had his own hood in the lab or was personally directing clinical trials (right?) Wow.

Chemical engineers fare better than chemists. In other news, dog bites man.

From today's edition of Chemical and Engineering News, an article on the hiring of chemical engineers in the biotech world by Sophie Rovner:

Chemical engineering employment is “always steady, with fewer ups and downs in the job market” than chemists have to contend with, says David G. Jensen, managing director for biopharmaceutical life sciences at Kincannon & Reed, a Waynesboro, Va., executive search firm. “I’ve been doing this work for 25 years and have never seen a downtime for biotech chemical process development engineers,” adds Jensen, who writes extensively about careers and also moderates the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s online Science Careers Forum. 

Robust demand for chemical engineers may explain why wages are holding up well in the profession. In a survey of salaries for 2011 bachelor’s degree graduates, chemical engineers placed first, with an average salary offer of $66,886, according to the National Association of Colleges & ­Employers. 

The American Chemical Society’s own surveys of members consistently show that chemical engineering graduates receive higher salaries and are more likely to hold permanent full-time jobs than graduates with degrees in chemistry (C&EN, March 14, page 52).

Rovner's article is pretty interesting, with a couple of in-depth looks at what chemical engineers do on a regular basis. A small point: Rovner doesn't cover (IIRC) what I see as the broad economic sweep, which is that the smaller companies that were looking at bio-based materials during the 2007-2008 oil price spike (e.g. the Amyrises of the world) are now large enough and developed enough to be hiring chemical engineers to develop their processes to larger scale. I wonder if I'm right.

Another note: Hanson's short article (also linked above) is worth reading, if only to see that the broader economic trends are hitting chemical engineers as well.

It's apparent to me that if you're mathematically, mechanically and chemically inclined, you should think long and hard about a career in chemical engineering. I'll note (said the fox, looking at the grapes) that I have worked with chemical engineers a number of times. I've never envied what they do, but I have always envied* their salaries.

*I'm not much a salary envier, I might note; if I was, I don't think I could deal with life very well. 

That's a lot of clams to be a salesperson

From LinkedIn, another data point in the "working for scientific equipment manufacturers" discussion in the comments of the plumber post:

My client is a highly respected, well known manufacturer of scientific instrumentation and consumables serving researchers at pharma and biotech companies, as well as scientists at academic and government research institutions. This client is looking to hire a San Francisco or San Diego based Sales Rep to cover CA, AZ, and NV. Overnight travel is estimated at around 30-50%. 

Requirements:

• BS/BA degree in Chemistry (or related) is strongly preferred but applicable work experience could be substituted
• Understanding of Organic Chemistry is preferred but not required 
• Experience in sales or a customer facing role (Field Applications Scientist, Technical Specialist, etc)
• Preference for capital equipment sales (equipment over 10k)
• Excellent interpersonal, communication, and presentation skills
• Ability and willingness to perform the required travel 
• Ability and willingness to perform some of your own lead generation

Compensation:

The position offers a base salary + total comp of anywhere from 90-115k, depending on the base salary you receive and overall performance. Candidates seeking a total comp package at plan of up to 120k are encouraged to apply. The position also includes a car allowance, home office set-up, and complete benefits package. 

Uh, wow. That sounds like a lot of money*; of course, it is sales, where you're working your butt off and trying to interact with people. It is this latter item that I suspect most chemists just don't have the stomach for (I know I don't.) Best of luck to those who are interested (click through for contact info.)

*You could also argue that someone is exaggerating; that, of course, might be overly cynical.

Chemist versus plumber

Lots more chemists in the past; lots more plumbers overall. Thanks to Job Voyager for the comparison. 

Computer programmers versus chemists: no contest.

When I was a young B.S. chemist working at a small company, I was ecstatic over one of our company's small perks: free peanut butter sandwiches and all the free soda you could drink. I should have been a computer programmer, according to the New York Times:

Free meals, shuttle buses and stock options are de rigueur. So the game maker Zynga dangles free haircuts and iPads to recruits, who are also told that they can bring their dogs to work. Path, a photo-sharing site, moved its offices so it could offer sweeping views of the San Francisco Bay. At Instagram, another photo-sharing start-up, workers take personal food and drink orders from employees, fill them at Costco and keep the supplies on hand for lunches and snacks.  

Then there are salaries. Google is paying computer science majors just out of college $90,000 to $105,000, as much as $20,000 more than it was paying a few months ago. That is so far above the industry average of $80,000 that start-ups cannot match Google salaries. Google declined to comment.

Wow. Assuming the industry average is actually 80k for a bachelor's CS major, that's a sign that chemists would be hard-pressed to compete for young talent against the computer field. (Actually, I assume that 80k is the industry median salary for all programmers; the numbers just don't make a lot of sense otherwise. Thanks, BLS!)

But you'd be challenged to find a single B.S. chemist who was making a Google salary as a chemist, I'll bet.

The other tidbits in the article about the field are revealing as well:

“The atmosphere is brutally competitive,” said Keith Rabois, a Silicon Valley veteran and chief operating officer at Square, where Mr. Firestone works. “Recruiting in Silicon Valley is more competitive and intense and furious than college football recruiting of high school athletes.” [snip]

Nationwide unemployment among computer scientists and programmers is higher than in other white-collar professions — around 5 percent — in part because many jobs have vanished overseas. But even with a glut of engineers on the job market, few have the skills that tech companies look for, said Cadir Lee, chief technology officer at Zynga. [snip]

Tech recruiters have also expanded their searches. They still scout college campuses, particularly Stanford’s computer science department, where this year it was common for seniors to receive half a dozen offers by the end of first semester.

Interesting to note that (assuming the reporters didn't mess it up), the 5% unemployment rate for computer scientists is actually higher than chemists (ACS (2010): 3.8%, BLS (2011): 3.1%.)

Well, if you have a teenager that's trying to decide on a career, you might send them Google's way...