A recent report by Science indicates that the current economic downturn is resulting in an increasing trend of young scientists doing multiple postdocs. This isn’t good news for young scientists because postdoctoral positions are only slightly better paid than the teaching or research assistantships that graduate students receive. In addition, the workload of a postdoctoral researcher is generally the same as that of a graduate student, which often translates to 60 plus hours in the lab per week.

Overall, this trend has two very negative consequences for PhD scientists: 1. It extends the amount of time before a PhD scientist can actually start earning a reasonable salary and thus begin investing in their future and saving for retirement; and 2. For women, it puts incredible constraints on the timing for having children.

Adding more years to the scientific training period is nothing new. In fact the trend, even before this economic downturn, has been that it takes more and more years to become a PhD scientist than ever before. Most of our PhD advisors managed to get their PhDs in only 3 or 4 years, but that was back in the 1970s. Today, the national average is 5.5 years to earn a PhD in chemistry and, unlike in the ’70s or ’80s, a postdoctoral appointment is almost always necessary in order to obtain any academic position, as well as many industry positions. Considering that most postdoctoral positions are 2 to 3 years in length, if one must now complete 2 postdocs before they can find a job, then we are talking about a 15 year investment of time into higher education before landing one’s first job!!! That means that someone who goes straight from high school through college without taking any time off will be 33 years old before they have their first job, which is also the age at which women start encountering tremendous risk and difficulty in having babies.

The additional problem with such an extraordinary investment in time is that women cannot easily have babies if they are working in a laboratory. Due to the dangers that chemicals pose to a pregnancy, women will have to leave the lab. Although there are some research advisors who can find other work for pregnant women to do, it is usually a hindrance to one’s career to have to stay out of the lab for such a long time (10 months). Additionally, as a postdoc, one is performing a short contractual job that requires extraordinary productivity. Most women feel that they will not be fulfilling their job demands if they get pregnant during a postdoc. That means that they must either risk never having children or limiting their job prospects.

The current outlook for PhD scientists seems to be one of outlandish time investment and diminishing returns. Financial planners will tell you that waiting until you are 33 or older to begin saving money for retirement is a huge mistake, but that is the unfortunate situation that most PhD chemists find themselves in these days. Had PhD chemists chosen different fields that offered better returns, in many cases they would have found much more financial security at the end of the day.

Instead of seeking a second postdoc position, we would recommend that PhD scientists broaden their job searches and goals so that they can start reaping the rewards of their higher education sooner, rather than later. However, we know that it is a very difficult place to be in and there are no easy answers. We hope that future scientists are warned sufficiently of the future they face and that economic prosperity will buoy the market again for chemists.

Photo: http://www.math.cmu.edu/~shaikhet/