<p>Why are job prospects so poor for Chemistry majors?</p>
<p>See the other threads but to sum it up terrible. Less than 40% of chemistry grads are employed full time (ACS survey) and half of them are in crap low paying technician jobs in academia. Only about 20% of chem grads get decent jobs. The private sector, especially big phrama is laying them off in droves and going to hiring their science staff as temps for any jobs that can’t easily be off-shored. As a temp you can expect to fight for $15 per hour without benefits even sick leave and have no job security for your short and fulfilling career and an impoverished chemist. Do yourself a huge favor and steer clear.</p>
<p>I don’t understand it. In the news, I keep hearing about how American students are faring poorly in math and science and about how we must get more young people interested in technical fields. </p>
<p>Furthermore, roughly two years, Newsweek published an article about how we need more innovation, particularly in medicine and green technology in order to alleviate some of problems that afflict mankind. Shouldn’t this increase the demand for science majors?</p>
<p>I think that if you want to go into a science field, you have to pursue additional degrees to be competitive. In order to land a job where you are inventing and making progress in research, you may need a masters or phD for example. That’s my guess anyways</p>
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<p>Lots of people, including journalists who have little knowledge of science or economics, write as if all STEM subjects are similar in the economy. Reality is that there is considerable variation. For example, biology is the most popular STEM major, graduating as many as or more than the number who graduate in all engineering subjects put together. It is not surprising that they do not have good job and career prospects in the field when there are so many of them relative to the number of good jobs available. The number of chemistry graduates is much smaller, but still more than the number of good jobs available (and which do not consider biology graduates as a substitute).</p>
<p>According to another thread on this site job prospects for geo-scientists could not be better and relatively few students are majoring in it. Most Geology programs, however, require three semesters of Calculus, one semester of Diferential Equations, three semesters of Calculus based Physics and upper division courses in Mineralology, Petrology, Stratigraphy, Paleontology, Geophysics and Field Work in Geology.</p>
<p>Geology is no longer “Rocks for Jocks” as programs have become much more rigorous due to major employers, particularly oil companies, pressuring colleges and universities to produce Geology graduates with strong Math and Physical Science credentials.</p>
<p>OP, it seems this way because of how many graduates there are and because of the amount of advanced training required. You can only get so much with a B.S., and at all levels there is a need to set yourself apart/distinguish yourself from the others to be as competitive as possible.
If you can do the latter, then your job prospects won’t be bad at all. Some people have a very negative view of course, as not everyone can do this.
best.</p>
<p>Tinuviel8,</p>
<p>Other than getting a Master’s or doctorate, how could one distinguish himself? </p>
<p>Do you guys think that the unfavorable job prospects have something to do with the flagging economy? That is that the government is spending less on research, and hence, less need for lower-level scientists?</p>
<p>I’ve seen articles going back 15 years talking about the low pay and just plain lack of respect that chemists get from the business majors running things. </p>
<p>Also the main employer of chemists (other than academia that loves to exploit chemist/biologists who can’t get real jobs) is the pharmaceutical industry which has collapsed. The geniuses running things there didn’t spend enough developing new drugs and now their blockbuster patents are expiring. They will have hugely reduced revenue and it takes 10 years to bring new drugs to market so don’t look for them to recover anytime soon. Their strategy has been to use permatemps for any job they can’t send over to China or India. I get emails from contract firms about lousy permatemp jobs at Abbott and Baxter labs on a daily basis. </p>
<p>The Chemical industry has been declining for decades. It just cost too darn much to comply with US environmental regulations and NIMBY’s who don’t want plants within a hundred miles of their home. Much better to poison the environment in some third world country where they can bribe officials to look the other way.</p>
<p>Most of the remaining jobs are technician jobs or QC jobs and those are more appropriate for someone with just a 2 year practical AAS degree rather than a BS or grad degree. However, since companies can get away with it, they are demanding higher degrees and paying them like HS dropouts. </p>
<p>So pursue a chemistry degree if you want to pay through the nose for tuition, study feverishly to pass quantum mechanics, work long hours in the lab while the business majors are drinking themselves into a drunken stupor and then live a life of poverty and long periods of unemployment while the business majors get fat, buy a large house and have a family while the chemist gets cancer from working with all those toxic chemicals and dies quietly and alone on the streets because companies don’t give health insurance or other benefits to science staff.</p>
<p>And that’s the thing Choe, Regulation. Regulation is killing off a lot of opportunities in many fields inside and outside of science. The EPA, and their liberal backings place such restrictive policies that it causes negative growth. Nuclear energy should be part of the wave of alternative energies, but thanks to the fear mongering tactics of the left, we’re seeing a decreased funding in physics to create a fusion reactor. You’re telling me over 50 years ago, we harnessed the power of fusion into a weapon, but now we can’t harness it into a viable form where it would take a fraction of the energy put into fossil fuels to create enough energy to power millions of homes? What about algae based fuel? Why has that suddenly stopped in it’s tracks? Because it emits carbon? The algae reabsorbs that CO2 and the pollution emitted is negated. Need scientists for that, as well as engineers from all different backgrounds. I honestly don’t see how this economy will turn around without scientific advancement. Healthcare is definitely a bubble that’s going to burst thanks to things like Medicare, medicaid, Obamacare, if it’s not deemed unconstitutional. The financial sector is rocky at the moment with the European debt crisis and the amount of debt that we racked up, although it may turn around at any moment, but again, new regulations here can make things dicey. I am pursuing a comp. sci major, as it seems that many operations are turning to computer based operations. But again, I am worried about a new tech bubble like 1999, as some of these companies are growing way too rapidly.</p>