Which field of physics has the best job prospects?

[Juhna89]

Hey,

Which of the following branches of physics has the best chance to gain employment after graduating with Msc:

- Meteorology
- Materials and nanophysics
- Particle and nuclear physics
- Electronics and industrial applications physics
- Computational physics
- Aerosol and environmental physics

Also I am open for biophysics and medical physics if its possible to have an international career with this specialization, which I am little bit skeptical about. Since you do need to get license to practice as a medical physicist and every country has their own license.

Furthermore, other options would be theoretical physics, astronomy, space physics or geophysics.
However, I have narrowed it down to the branches mentioned in the beginning of the post. However, if one of the branches mentioned later has great job outlook, I am open for it.

I am mainly interested in knowing the global outlook for those outlooks and I am not interested in getting phd if I can avoid it. Furthermore, I am not really interested in academia, but I am open to it if need be.

As a background, I am about to graduate with Msc in mechanical engineering with thesis and I have bachelors of science in mechanical engineering as well. Meaning that I don't have bachelors in physics nor am I planning to get one, I already have a spot in physics department in one of the best universities in Finland for Msc and Bachelors combined, but my background allows me to skip getting the bachelors in physics.

 

[JakeBrodskyPE]

All of these are interesting fields. Nevertheless, those professing to know which will do better than the others, probably does not know what they are talking about.

Employment, is actually an economic issue, not a technical one. If I were in your place, I might choose Electronics and Industrial application physics --but that's only because I have had good luck with similar endeavors. The materials and nano-physics option is also near and dear to my heart.Keep in mind, these are the choices I would make, approaching this from the perspective of someone who has practiced Engineering for 30 years. (And I intend to continue practicing until I get it right)

You should have your own notions of what feels right to you. Do not substitute my biases and old man attitude (so my kids tell me) for your aspirations.

 

[analogdesign]

Following on Jake's advice, I think it is much better to be an outstanding practitioner of an average field than a mediocre practitioner of a "hot" field. What I'm getting at is the fields are different enough that you will probably have different levels of natural ability and passion for them. In graduate school I fought my way through my signal processing courses but excelled at my courses in electronics and semiconductors. Even though, at the time, signal processing was much hotter, I think I made the right choice because times change. These days signal processing isn't as hot as it used to be and people have spent the last 10 years remembering that you can't send pure numbers over wire or over the air so you need some analog expertise even in the most "digital" of systems.