Is the Job Market for Physicists Better Outside of America?

[Gypsie]

I'm fully aware after having read through various forums and articles online by people who know what they are talking about that the job market for physicists, at least in America, is awful. Most grad students nowadays end up spending 5-10 years doing post-doctoral work, and when they finally do get a permanent (or at least more permanent than a post-doc position) job, they have to worry about getting grant money, which usually dictates what research they will be doing (It's hard to get grant money for really original ideas, even if they could be very insightful, as they are yet unproven to work).

So my question is this:

Is the job market for physicists any better in other parts of the world?

 

[Vanadium 50]

The job market for physicists is not awful. What is awful is the job market when one of the conditions is "I want to direct my own research program". Apart from two brief windows, one in the 40's and one in the 50's, it has always been awful.

It is also not any harder to get grant money for "truly original ideas". I don't know why you would think so.

To answer your question, things are difficult everywhere in the 1st world. It's easier to find work in developing countries, but of course that comes with its own set of challenges.

 

[JakeBrodskyPE]

I have personally reviewed grant proposals (not for physics, but nevertheless, they were grant requests). It is appalling how poorly so many supposedly educated people write.

It seems we have found a system that can even educate a moron. The problem is that, having gone through it, everyone begins to sound like the lowest common denominator.

Please understand, I am not a shining example of literacy. However, when reading these proposals, I was shocked that the people who wrote them had no idea of who their audience was, what sorts of things we would like to have known, or why the grant money was there in the first place. Besides obvious problems with jargon, the poor grammar, poor spelling and poor sentence structure made an awful impression on us.

These are the problems that grant managers see far too often. You have to be a bit of a salesman when pitching for grant money. Schools don't teach you that. You learn it the hard way. Welcome to the school of hard knocks.