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The initial employment of new PhDs reflects job availability combined with the search strategies and employment goals of job seekers. Opportunities for new physics PhDs have improved over the past eight years in all three major employment sectors. Concurrently, students are searching more broadly for opportunities, and many are marketing themselves more effectively. As a result, the current job market for new physics PhDs is the strongest we have seen in at least 10 years.
The unemployment rate and the time to find a position are two common indicators of the general health of the job market. Only 12% of new physics PhDs who secured permanent or potentially permanent positions--including staff positions in industry and government labs and tenured or tenure-track positions in academia--report that it took them more than six months to find a position. Similarly, unemployment among new PhDs is below 2% six months after degree, the lowest in nearly a decade.
Over the past several years, about half of new physics PhDs secured permanent or potentially permanent work. The majority of these positions are in the industrial sector. Since the early 1980s have this many new PhDs found potentially permanent positions directly after earning their degrees.
For many years, PhD physicists have been finding employment in engineering as well as in software development and applications. What has changed is the significant increase in the number of opportunities in these fields.
During good economic times or bad, experimentalists have an easier time finding work than do theorists. In part, this is because there are more theorists produced than there are opportunities. Among new physics PhDs, experimentalists outnumber theorists by roughly 2 to 1. Interestingly, this mirrors the ratio between experimentalists and theorists on university physics faculties. However, the ratio grows to about 3 to 1 for physicists in government labs, and is far larger still for physicists employed in industry.
The employment options for new physics PhDs are related, to some extent, to their areas of specialization. Most PhDs in fields such as astrophysics, astronomy, and elementary particle physics tend to spend their early careers in postdoctoral positions. By contrast, most PhDs in optics, atomic and molecular physics, and condensed matter physics have gone directly into permanent or potentially permanent positions.
Additional evidence of the vitality of the job market for physicists can be seen in the opinions expressed by new physics PhDs about their initial employment. The vast majority report that their positions are professionally challenging and intellectually stimulating.
However, the job market for new PhDs is not perfect. Some, especially among those who were employed in industry, question whether their jobs were appropriate in light of their PhD training. And 13% of new physics PhDs working in related fields say their positions are not challenging. It is unclear whether such dissatisfaction reflects a weakness in the job market or disappointment on the part of some PhDs who were unable to continue in basic research.
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