Dismal market for physicists

"What is the job situation for doctoral candidates in the physical sciences?" Oxtoby replied, "Computer scientists can get jobs immediately…Other areas are a bit tighter and a bit harder; you have to think more seriously if you want to go into a faculty position…It's not in response to a bad job market; it's more that there are a lot of opportunities for which this training is excellent preparation…."

The good dean should be more forthright, and call a spade a spade: The job market for Ph.D. physicists, etc., has been dismal for 30 years. A chemistry department has two openings, receives 200 applications, interviews 20, and hires two. Alan Guth, proponent of the inflationary universe idea, was a postdoc for eight years. Others try to cobble together $30,000 a year from teaching five courses at five different community colleges (called freeway bandits in southern California). Statistics that show 2-5-percent unemployed are suspect-they count these freeway bandits as employed, but is this what you work your butt off to get a Ph.D. for? Does teaching freshman-sophomore general physics require a Ph.D.? The answer clearly is no.

Getting a good job outside academia is easier said than done. Research training is soft skills, but employers want hard skills like HTML. The openings posted in ProNet are getting fewer and fewer, and they all require relevant experience and specific skills.

Gerald Fong, SM'61
El Monte, California