Author: ZapperZ (PF)

Employment in Physics – Part 1

There have been frequent questions on the kinds of employment that are available for physicists. That question is very difficult to answer, because it depends on a number of factors, such as where you are, what degree you obtained, what area of specialization you went into, and what skill you have acquired.

I think it is best to start by simply pointing out the kind of job advertisements that most physicists in the market actually read. As far as I know, these are the two most popular sources of job listings aimed at physicists and others in similar fields such as astronomy, astrophysics, biophysics, chemistry, etc. Keep in mind that these job listings changes often, even weekly, and the number of listings also fluctuate during different times of the year. So sample them a few times to get a good idea of the kinds of jobs that are available.

A few of the items in the list are also for "studentship", or schools offering assistantships for students to pursue a Ph.D degree, sometime for a specific field of study. So not all of them are only for job-seekers.

Maybe this might influence you in the area of study you want to go into..

http://aip.jobcontrolcenter.com/search.cfm
http://physicsweb.org/jobs/

Zz.


Employment in Physics – Part 2

This is a continuation of the series on issues related to employment in physics and of physicists.

A new statistics on the salary increase of physics Ph.D's working in the industrial sector in the US has just been released.

http://www.tipmagazine.com/tip/INPHF...iss-6/p10.html

I am bringing this up because I want to make two important points:

1. That if you have the needed skills and specialities, your employability as a physics Ph.D transcends beyond just the typical academic boundaries, and that you CAN be employed in many industrial sector of the economy. This I have tried to emphasize in my "So You Want To Be A Physicist" essays;

2. That compared to many other areas of science and engineering, a physics degree holder in the industrial sector still makes a "comfortable", if not lucrative, living.

Zz.


Employment in Physics – Part 3

Once again, we hear "horror stories" based on anecdotal evidence of the difficulties in finding jobs in with a physics degree. While this is certainly can be true, the employability or desirability of a physics graduate depends HEAVILY on (i) the area of physics that that person specialized in (ii) whether it was theoretical or experimental (iii) the skills that the person acquired (iv) pedigree (i.e. who was his/her mentor).

Because of this, you can have someone (like Jonathan Katz) who sees people going into dispair due to not having a good career in physics, versus people like me who sees Ph.D's in Medical Physics and Condensed matter physics being offered $70,000 upwards jobs in industries even before they graduate! Let's get this VERY clear - what you choose to do in graduate school has a huge impact on your ability to get a job upon graduation! It can be the difference between having your options being narrowed to only employment in the academic institutions or research labs, and having a wider option to also be employable in industries.

This topic will certainly be a major part of a future installment of "So You Want To Be A Physicist" essay. But for now, if you want a good snapshot of the employment in physics, at least in the US, go past all of these anecdotal evidence and look at the statistics that have been compiled by the AIP.

http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/emptrends.html

Zz.


Employment in Physics – Part 4

This time I'm making a reference to a recent article on the job market for a specific speciality - MRI Physicists.

http://www.tipmagazine.com/tip/INPHF.../iss-1/p22.pdf

While this article focuses on a particular field, it also gives a broad feel to the job outlook in medical physics as a whole. In any case, the advice being given in this article echoes what I have been trying to get across in this series of essay, and in my "So You Want To Be A Physicist" essay - the ability to adapt to changing situations. To be able to do that, one must have as wide of a training and experience as possible to increase one's changes of having the necessary skill.