Here I am, back again to tackle the age-old question (well, the burning question of the past 15 years if you're a chemist, at least): to PhD or not to PhD? In the first part, I wrote about the pros and cons of getting a PhD in the sciences, using chemistry in particular because that is my field. My conclusion/opinion was that it was solely dependant on the individual to decide, but that you should go into graduate school knowing that your job prospects are grim (for the reasons discussed previously). But just how bad is the job market for new PhD scientists? That is the subject of Part 2.
First, I'm going to state upfront that this post isn't going to involve a discussion on statistics or have links to relevant studies, not because I haven't read them (I have) but because other people have already written about these, and done it well. In particular, I would point you towards Chemjobber's blog which regularly updates chemists on the job market's ups and (mostly, these days) downs. Also, keep in mind that these are just my observations and opinions, and that I've been lucky enough to have had steady employment as a chemist since I got out of school in 2008. With that out of the way, let's dive into the discussion and ask the question:
Just how bad is the job market?
The chemistry job market had already been slowing down considerably when I finished my postdoc in 2008 and got my first job. About a month after I started working, the housing bubble burst and with it, the economy, which had already been teetering for a while, absolutely cratered. Along with everything else, it deeply affected the job market, not just for scientists but for everyone. However, the science job market, which had already been sliding for several years due to a variety of factors (shipping of jobs over to Asia, stagnant/declining salaries, oppressive federal regulations, etc) was hit particularly hard by the economic downturn. While I was lucky to find employment, many of my former classmates and colleagues from graduate school and my postdoc weren't as lucky. They, along with others whom I would speak to at technical conferences and meetings during those years told me how they were using their postdocs not only as part of their training, but as a way of maintaining some semblance of steady employment while they looked for full-time positions that just weren't out there. Many of them stayed at their postdocs for longer than the usual 2-3 years, many of them were forced to leave earlier than they'd intended due to funding running out, and several jumped to additional postdocs. Unfortunately, these are all patterns that have become more and more common within the field. However, the consequences of this are quite negative, as postdoc salaries are only a step above the stipend one makes as a graduate student. Additionally, there are typically not health benefits associated (at least there weren't when I was a postdoc..maybe that's changed now? Please update me on this if you know differently). It forces many people to delay marriage, starting a family, buying a house, and settling down until they have a steady job, which can oftentimes last well into one's 30s. I elaborated on this in Part 1 so I won't rehash it here, but suffice to say it is still a grim time to be looking for a job in chemistry, especially for new graduates looking to make their first entrance into the workforce.
This leads me to the next part, which is that at least in industrial science (which is what I know), even an abundance of job postings relevant to your skills doesn't necessarily mean that things are looking up. Why is this, you ask? There are a few reasons, including:
1) Companies are much less willing to train someone who can't hit the ground running from day one. It used to be that if a company was hiring for a position and you fit ~70% of the criteria they were looking for, they would have no problem hiring you and training you to get you up to speed in order to perform the job. In many cases, you might not even have needed to fit the criteria that much...if you had skills they liked and a good work ethic (with good references), they would hire you and train you. Nowadays, because it's such a buyer's market, they're much less willing, it not willing at all, to do this. Because they don't have to...you need them much more than they need you.
2) Many positions are only listed online to comply with federal law. Many companies have no intention of looking at resumes and bringing people in for interviews. They want to hire from within and often already have someone picked out for the role. Or, they have poached their desired candidate from another company and just have to go through the motions of posting a job online, again to comply with employment law. That's why job listings will often look like they were written for one person specifically...because often, they are. Or, they are written that way because...
3) ...It's such a buyer's market that companies are more than happy to sit back and take their time waiting for that one perfect candidate to fall into their lap. It's analogous to trawling a fishing line with no bait on the hook waiting for that one fish in the entire ocean to bite. This goes hand in hand with point #1 that I made above: because it's a buyer's marker and there are more people looking for jobs than there are open positions, companies don't have to fill them right away...they can wait until the person who fits their job description to a T applies. That's why you see such detailed and technical listings: rather than saying "we are looking for a synthetic chemist with experience in nitrogen-containing compounds," you'll see an ad that says "we are looking for a synthetic chemist who has experience preparing N-substituted hetereocycles that contain 5- to 7-membered rings that also happen to have ester groups in the 3-position and which are solids with melting points between 100 and 155 oC. Must have 7.5 years experience with these molecules." I may be exaggerating a bit, but not by much. Believe me, if you've ever seen the same job listed month after month (or in some cases, year after year), it's either because of point #2 above, or it's because of this.
This leads me to the next part, which is that at least in industrial science (which is what I know), even an abundance of job postings relevant to your skills doesn't necessarily mean that things are looking up. Why is this, you ask? There are a few reasons, including:
1) Companies are much less willing to train someone who can't hit the ground running from day one. It used to be that if a company was hiring for a position and you fit ~70% of the criteria they were looking for, they would have no problem hiring you and training you to get you up to speed in order to perform the job. In many cases, you might not even have needed to fit the criteria that much...if you had skills they liked and a good work ethic (with good references), they would hire you and train you. Nowadays, because it's such a buyer's market, they're much less willing, it not willing at all, to do this. Because they don't have to...you need them much more than they need you.
2) Many positions are only listed online to comply with federal law. Many companies have no intention of looking at resumes and bringing people in for interviews. They want to hire from within and often already have someone picked out for the role. Or, they have poached their desired candidate from another company and just have to go through the motions of posting a job online, again to comply with employment law. That's why job listings will often look like they were written for one person specifically...because often, they are. Or, they are written that way because...
3) ...It's such a buyer's market that companies are more than happy to sit back and take their time waiting for that one perfect candidate to fall into their lap. It's analogous to trawling a fishing line with no bait on the hook waiting for that one fish in the entire ocean to bite. This goes hand in hand with point #1 that I made above: because it's a buyer's marker and there are more people looking for jobs than there are open positions, companies don't have to fill them right away...they can wait until the person who fits their job description to a T applies. That's why you see such detailed and technical listings: rather than saying "we are looking for a synthetic chemist with experience in nitrogen-containing compounds," you'll see an ad that says "we are looking for a synthetic chemist who has experience preparing N-substituted hetereocycles that contain 5- to 7-membered rings that also happen to have ester groups in the 3-position and which are solids with melting points between 100 and 155 oC. Must have 7.5 years experience with these molecules." I may be exaggerating a bit, but not by much. Believe me, if you've ever seen the same job listed month after month (or in some cases, year after year), it's either because of point #2 above, or it's because of this.
As you see, there is a lot of overlap between the three reasons I've listed above, but having had experienced all of that firsthand over the years, I am confident that what I've written is true. The takeaway message is that those doing the hiring are firmly in the driver's seat at the moment. It's the age-old example of supply and demand, and in the case of science PhDs, the supply far outweighs the demand. It had been trending this way over the last decade and this has been the status quo since 2008 and shows no signs of abating, especially with groups like the ACS and the federal government pushing for more STEM graduates to flood the market for jobs that simply aren't there right now. Of course there are exceptions to all of this, but based on personal experience and observations, this seems to be the norm by far. I've personally experienced how hard it can be to find a new position, and I've been in the fortunate position of looking for a new job while I had a job. There is an old saying that it's easier to find a job when you have a job; conversely, it's said that it's much harder to find one when you're unemployed. Fair or not, this is the truth and with so many PhD scientists of varying experience levels either trying to enter the workforce with no experience or numerous PhD scientists out of work and looking to re-enter it, it doesn't show any signs of changing.
Obviously, it's hard for me to say that because the job market is bad that one shouldn't get a science PhD and try to get a job doing science, especially if that is what one's true passion is. However, the fact that the input/output ratio is not skewed in your favor during the best of times, and the fact that these are far from the best of times, makes it hard to say that it would be a good career path to head down for someone just starting out. Yes, things like this are cyclical and have a way of self-correcting, but not always, and the short-term prognosis is not good. Again, it's down to personal preference and I don't want to definitively say yes or no because it's not up to me to decide what is best for each individual...that's up to them to decide. I hope that I have at least given you food for thought, and I would welcome any discussions about your experiences in the science job market in the comments section below.
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