What sort of wage should I expect once I graduate my PhD?

[Doofy]

I'm a little bit over half way through my PhD (particle physics) at a good UK university and I don't know what I'll do next. So far the only things in my head are "post-doc" or "something else", but I'd like to know roughly what sort of wage you would be happy with if you were in my shoes, either staying in physics or doing something else.

Further info: I have a 1st class degree/masters from the same uni, I'll be 26 when I graduate, no wife or kids or anything like that.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

This is a new website for getting a rough idea of salaries
http://www1.salary.com/Physicist-I-Salary.html

 

[Lavabug]

I would seek data from UK employment bureaus...

But from what I know, have read, and have heard from the mouth of UK academics about post-PhD physics and especially HEP in the UK, you should very seriously consider keeping an open mind to continental Europe for both post-docs and "something else" at least temporarily. I think every single lecturer I knew of at UCL was either foreign-born, foreign-educated, and/or spent a post-doc or two outside of the UK.

 

[Doofy]

I would seek data from UK employment bureaus...

But from what I know, have read, and have heard from the mouth of UK academics about post-PhD physics and especially HEP in the UK, you should very seriously consider keeping an open mind to continental Europe for both post-docs and "something else" at least temporarily. I think every single lecturer I knew of at UCL was either foreign-born, foreign-educated, and/or spent a post-doc or two outside of the UK.

I'm not against the idea of leaving the UK, I mean, I've got nothing keeping me here really. My main reservation about it is that I only speak English. When you say continental Europe for HEP graduates, do I take that to mean most end up at CERN?

 

[ParticleGrl]

I'm not against the idea of leaving the UK, I mean, I've got nothing keeping me here really. My main reservation about it is that I only speak English. When you say continental Europe for HEP graduates, do I take that to mean most end up at CERN?

Most HEP phds I know ended up in insurance or finance after a brief postdoc stint. There are orders of magnitude more graduates then jobs.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Orders of magnitude? Plural? That means a factor 100. I find that hard to believe.

 

[Lavabug]

I'm not against the idea of leaving the UK, I mean, I've got nothing keeping me here really. My main reservation about it is that I only speak English. When you say continental Europe for HEP graduates, do I take that to mean most end up at CERN?

That is not necessarily why I said it. CERN is an obvious destination, but there are many universities in the EU where you could carry out post-docs in your field, and you might have an easier time getting into them as a a UK graduate at first than post-docs in the UK, given that there is some bias towards early career home-grown phd's (I have no tables to prove this, just word of mouth from academics), in favor of foreign graduates from Asia and such for post-docs.