Where Do Chemistry Graduates Work?

Even as the ACS published this week an article about the employment outlook for chemists, the improvements are not equally distributed across the spectrum of recent graduates to established professionals (http://cen.acs.org/articles/92/i31/Job-Trends-Look-Promising.html).  Employment among chemists remains better than the employment among the general workforce, yet we are still below the heydays of unemployment below 2%.  

Data from ACS about new graduates in calendar year 2013 continued to show an upturn of unemployment among new graduates growing to nearly 15%, with a stagnation of salaries across all degrees.  While the production of PhD chemists has remained nearly flat over the past 20 years (about 2000 per year, according to ACS and the NSF's Survey of Earned Doctorates: http://www.sedsurvey.org/Pages/digestsandsummarytables.aspx), the production of Bachelor's degrees in chemistry has increased significantly over the past 10 years (by nearly 40%).  It begs the question: have we saturated the market with chemists?  Not a unique perspective (see Tom Barton's article from Jan. 2014: http://cen.acs.org/articles/92/i1/Shoulder.html).

Nearly 60% of all BA/BS chemists are employed in industry or government positions, with an increasing number of "entrepreneurs" among them, whereas nearly 47% of PhD chemists are employed in academic positions.  With an ever-growing number of highly-educated Bachelor's level chemists in this country seeking employment, we need to promote a business environment in this country that takes advantage of the talented chemists (and ACS members) here.

A recent report from the US Census Bureau provides some insight into where our science graduates are employed (https://www.census.gov/dataviz/visualizations/stem/stem-html/).  This screen-shot of some of the semi-quantitative data illustrates how chemistry/physical science graduates are distributed among occupation groups.  Roughly, 30% of physical science graduates find themselves in "STEM Occupations."  So, what does this mean for training/professional development and the prospects for employment for chemistry graduates?

Call it the ravings of a lunatic Arts & Sciences dean, or the wise musings of a chemistry professional with nearly 30 years of experience in academic, industry, and national laboratory employment.  A chemist, regardless his or her degree, should have a solid training in chemistry - an expertise - but should be required to have skills, or at least an understanding, in the arts, social sciences, communications, and leadership/management - also known as a "liberal arts" foundation.  The ACS Committee on Professional Training, which evaluates the chemistry degree curricula of over 600 Bachelor's degree programs, should continue to highlight the need for strong communication and professional training for all chemistry graduates.

SUNY-Stony Brook is home to the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science (http://www.centerforcommunicatingscience.org/), which promotes communication skills for all science majors, regardless of degree.  Alan Alda has been a featured speaker at the open ACS Board Meeting in 2013 and is leading a workshop on communicating science to the general public at the San Francisco ACS Meeting in August, 2014 (http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2014/august/creating-buzz-about-science-to-help-solve-pressing-global-challenges.html).  If there is one thing we ACS members can do to improve the employment outlook for chemistry graduates, it will be to promote the humanities and social science skills of our student members.