What Career Paths Are Available for Physics Majors Outside Academia?

[Vectorspace17]

I'm currently studying Electrical Engineering, but I like Physics a lot more. The only reason I didn't initially major in Physics was that Engineering was much more employable. This may not be a great question, but what opportunities are available to someone who has a masters degree or higher in physics (besides working for a university)? I know physicists work for national laboratories, but I can't imagine there are too many jobs available. I'd really appreciate any feedback.

 

[Astronuc]

http://careers.physicstoday.org/jobs/ - a lot of faculty jobs, but also plenty of research or R&D jobs.

http://www.aip.org/statistics/
http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/emptrends.html

 

[ModusPwnd]

I wouldn't bother with physics unless you want to go to grad school. Even then... I got two physics degrees but could not get a career job after graduation.

Physics is a degree that is best suited towards people who want to take the professor road or people who want to learn physics. Otherwise it doesn't have much to offer IMO.

 

[ParticleGrl]

In my experience, people who get advanced degrees (masters/phd) in physics end up working in finance, insurance, management consulting etc. If you get lucky, you might be able to transition to a traditional scientific R&D job, but I don't know very many people from my phd class that managed to land one- there are too many physicists chasing too few jobs.

Its not to say you end up unemployed, but you probably won't get that science/engineering job. If your preferences are physics work > ee work > finance/management consulting/programming, you'd be silly to switch away from ee.

 

[twofish-quant]

One caveat here is that a "job working in a financial company" may not necessarily be a "financial job." For example, in a bank, you have lots of people with electrical engineering degrees, and they are doing more or less the same sort of work that they would be doing with a EE degree at a non-bank.

Similarly, I work for a financial firm, but I'm doing more or less the same type of work that I did in graduate school (i.e. crunching PDE's and babysitting supercomputers.)

A lot of this depends on what exactly you like about physics. You may end up working in a bank whatever you do, but the question then is whether you'll be doing ee-type work in a bank or physics-type work in a bank.