Gokul43201 said:
Private industry that supplies primarily to the government is just as likely to take a hit. In fact, while the government will first cut funding to castles-in-the-air projects like the one above, funding for "quickly useful science" will rarely take a big hit.
In 2004, about 3% of Physics PHDs were unemployed during the year following graduation.
About two-thirds of all PHDs get a postdoc - most of them in or near their field of expertise. About half of the remaining 30% work in physics. A fairly tiny fraction of Physics PHDs actually ends up in an area like finance or management.
Only 17% of physics PHDs consider themselves overqualified for their jobs. And I'm guessing that it's a very small fraction of these that work as unskilled labor.
I just looked up the employment data for the PHds that graduated from my department over the last decade. Out of the first 50 names that had provided their employment information, 15 got postdocs in academia, 3 had postdocs in Government Labs/Industry, 7 had been employed as scientists in Government labs, 9 as scientists/engineers in industry, 13 had accepted positions (lecturer/tenure track/scientist) in academia, 2 were in Finance and 1 was hired to work in Computing.
http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/highlite/emp/figure16.htm
http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/highlite/emp/table3.htm
http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/highlite/emp/table5.htm
Like I said, I expect that PhDs in pretty much all fields of science have low unemployment rates. However, that doesn't mean that PhDs in physics or biology are getting jobs with the job title "physicist" or "biologist", if you can live with that, then OK. Also, how many work as temps? A LOT Phds get jobs only as temps (and therefore aren't considered unemployed). I read science and nature everyweek, and I have seen several articles published by PhDs describing what it is like to move from job to job as a temp. 2/3 of PhDs get a postdoc? No one really wants to be a postdoc. Sure you get experience, but you are missing out on things like higher income and stuff like stock options and retirement benefits that you would get if a company hired you. Then after you spend 4-5 years of doing a post doc comes the game of competing with a horde of other PhDs in industry trying to get the same job as you.
All the stuff that I posted before was in reference to pursuing a PhD to work in industry, not academia. So out of the 50 post grads from your school 3 are postdocs in govt labs and 7 hired full time in government labs. 9 were actually employed in industry. That's great, but don't they worry just a tad in the government labs? The economy is already looking like it is going south due to the housing bubble that is going to explode in our faces, there is a good chance the upcoming recession could be quite severe. The government could easily cut funding for places like NASA in an instant. I would want to at least keep my options open if I were working for a govt. lab right now. So really only roughly 20% of the 50 PhDs polled got an actual job in private industry?
yeah you can call me paranoid, but whatever. since my company is about to go bankrupt, I have been asking everyone what their plans are. Many of the PhDs are going to scrounge around for jobs, a lot of them are probably going to have to sell their houses and move since ther are no jobs around here. One, who is 46 yo, even stated that he doesn't even plan on retiring as a chemist because of the way industry is right now. He said he was definitely going back to study to be a CPA or tax preparer. Granted it isn't physics, but the stories are similar across the board in all the sciences right now in industry.
Like I said in the general discussion board, I am pretty much done with the physical sciences. I definitely don't want to teach and industry is horrible right now. I am probably going to go back for a MD or PharmD. And if not that, then probably graduate training in economics to work in business.
And another thing not even mentioned was the fact that a PhD must also be willing to relocate more often/or travel a lot further to find jobs. How many PhDs polled actually get to live in areas that they really desire or how long of a commute do they have everyday? I believe it was Nature the other month that published a story of two PhDs who were married. The husband found a job in 1 place , while the wife couldn't find a job except one that was 200+ miles away. The couple even had children, but their situation forced the wife, who had the job 200+ miles away, to live all week in a house that they rented closer to her job. She would only come home on the weekends to be with her family. I'm sorry, but that is just insanity. Not only will this put a strain on their marriage in the long run, she is going to miss out on her kids growing up.