Chemical & Engineering News,
October 23, 1995

Copyright © 1995 by the American Chemical Society.

Chemists Post Modest Gains in Tough Job Market

Michael Heylin,

C&EN Washington


This year's American Chemical Society survey of the starting salaries and employment status of new chemistry and chemical engineering graduates offers further confirmation that the job market for chemists remains a challenging one. Full-time jobs in industry or elsewhere remain hard to come by. The numbers of chemists continuing with their education - either by choice or necessity - remain at or near historically high levels. But the starting salaries for the new graduates who have obtained full-time jobs this year seem to be keeping up with inflation.

Results from the survey also illustrate the initial advantage that chemical engineers have long enjoyed over chemists in the job market. At the bachelor's degree level, for instance, new chemical engineering graduates are about twice as likely to move directly into full-time employment as are chemistry graduates. And their starting salaries are 50% higher than those of their chemistry colleagues.

The annual starting salary survey is conducted by ACS's Department of Career Services. This year, it involved sending a questionnaire to a total of almost 9,800 new chemistry and chemical engineering graduates at the bachelor's, master's, and doctoral levels who received their degrees between September 1994 and June 1995. Their names and addresses were supplied by their university departments to ACS's Committee on Professional Training, the group that monitors and approves undergraduate chemistry programs.

The preliminary results reported in this summary are based on the first 2,450 responses - about 1,750 chemists and about 700 chemical engineers. Final returns are expected to reach more than 4,000. Complete results will be published later this year by the Department of Career Services as "Starting Salaries 1995." A sample of this size cannot claim to give the definitive and precise word on the entire chemical and chemical engineering professions. But it gives a useful indication of both the general state of the job market for new graduates and the direction of year-to-year changes in the chemical workforce.

Demographics

Data from the survey give a useful measure of the rate of entry of women and minorities into the chemical professions. Of all chemists responding, 45% are women. At the bachelor's level, women represent 48%; at the master's level, 40%. And 33% of the newly graduated Ph.D. chemists are women. Of all chemical engineering respondents, 34% are women.


Salaries of inexperienced chemists up in 1995.


These results from the new survey confirm that women are entering chemistry in ever increasing numbers. Their 45% share of the responses far exceeds their 22% share of responses to ACS's annual salary survey of all its working members in the U.S. (C&EN, Aug. 7, page 10).

By race and ethnicity, 21.4% of the newly graduated chemists responding to the new survey are not white. This compares with 15.3% nonwhite in the all-member survey. In the new survey, a total of 11.7% of chemistry graduates are Asian, including 5.9% Chinese. Another 1.5% fall into the Indian subcontinent category. The representation of blacks and Hispanics, both at 3.3%, remains disproportionately low relative to their numbers in the general population, as it does for American Indians, 0.4%. The remaining 1.2% are "other." Of new doctoral chemists, no less than 29% are Asian, including 22% Chinese. Of new B.S. chemists, 8% are Asian.

The overall ethnic breakdown of the new chemical engineering class is very similar to that for chemists, with 20.4% nonwhite.

By citizenship status, 90% of chemist respondents are U.S. citizens. Another 5% are permanent residents and 5% are on temporary or other visas. However, the breakdowns for doctoral and bachelor-level graduates are very different. Only 65% of new Ph.D.s are U.S. citizens, while 20% are permanent residents and 15% have temporary or other visas. At the bachelor's level, 96% of the new graduates are U.S. citizens.

In industry, men and women graduates receive almost identical starting salaries

Chemists Chemical engineers
Median starting salaries,$ thousands(a) Bachelor's Master's Ph.D. Bachelor's Master's Ph.D.
Men $27.8 $39.0 $54.0 $38.8 $43.8 $59.5
Women 27.0 38.3 55.0 40.8 na na
All $27.5 $39.0 $54.5 $40.0 $43.8 $59.2

a For inexperienced graduates with less than 12 months of work experience. na=not available (sample too small). Source: Preliminary data from ACS Starting Salary Survey 1995

Again, the overall breakdown for all new chemical engineers is very similar, with a total of 91% U.S. citizens, 3% permanent residents, and 6% on temporary visas.

Employment status

In identifying their current employment status, 30% of bachelor-level chemistry graduates indicate they have full-time jobs. This compares with 58% for new bachelor-level chemical engineers. Of the remaining bachelor-level chemists, 32% indicate they have moved on to graduate school, 18% have either temporary or part-time jobs, and 20% are not employed. If those not seeking employment are excluded from the population, the number without jobs is 18%. (For all graduate levels, close to half of those not employed full time indicate they were not looking for a job.)

For master's and doctoral chemists, the situation is a little stronger, but the numbers on postdocs or fellowships remain high. For master's chemists, 47% have jobs, 32% are on fellowships, 7% have part-time or temporary positions, and 14% are unemployed. The unemployed rate is lowest for new Ph.D. chemists, 8%, while 41% have found jobs, 44% are on postdocs, and 7% are employed part-time or in temporary positions.

Of new chemical engineering Ph.D.s, 70% have found jobs, 25% are on postdocs or fellowships, and 4% are looking for a job.

More of the jobs found by chemists at all degree levels (35% of the total) are at smaller operations with less than 500 employees than are at large operations with more than 10,000 employees (31%). For chemical engineers the reverse is true, with 21% of the jobs being at the smaller employers and 42% at the larger.

Of all chemistry graduates who report having received job offers, 49% received only one; 29% received two; 14%, three; and 8%, four or more. These results are similar to those for chemical engineers: 52% got one offer, 26% got two, 12% got three, and 10% got four or more.

Chemical engineers' starting salary advantage persists at all degree levels

Chemists Chemical engineers
Bachelor's Master's Ph.D. Bachelor's Master's Ph.D.
Work experience
Less than 12 months $25.0 $36.0 $49.0 $39.1 $43.6 $57.0
12-36 months 25.5 34.2 42.0 41.5 45.0 55.8
More than 36 months 32.9 42.0 50.0 40.1 46.5 56.8
All $26.0 $38.0 $50.0 $40.0 $44.4 $56.0

Source: Preliminary data from ACS Starting Salary Survey 1995

When asked if they would pursue advanced studies in the fall of 1995, 53% of new bachelor-level chemists indicated they would pursue studies full time - a number far higher than the percentage who reported they were actually doing so. Another 9% said they would do so on a part-time basis. Male chemists were somewhat more likely to report they would undertake such studies, 58% full time, compared with 47% for women.

Of all B.S. chemists who indicated they would be involved in advanced studies full time, 43% said they would further pursue chemistry. The next largest group, 30%, would take up medicine. Another 14% would study other physical or life sciences. Pharmacy and dentistry accounted for 5%. The remaining 11% said they would pursue a wide range of topics, with surprisingly small numbers attracted to business and law - less than 1% each.

Starting salaries

Analyzing starting salaries for chemists is a complex business, because there are so many important variables - degree level, amount of previous work experience, type of employer, and so on. The one variable that has far less impact than it once had is gender. This is mainly due to the federal Equal Pay Act of 1963. However, this legislation cannot prevent a tendency for women to still be somewhat overrepresented in sectors of the chemical profession that pay relatively poorly.

Be that as it may, median salaries - defined as base pay for primary job excluding overtime and bonuses - for both inexperienced bachelor's and Ph.D. chemists moved up $1,000 this year from last - from $24,000 to $25,000 and from $48,000 to $49,000, respectively. The apparent gain for master's chemists was more spectacular - from $30,800 to $36,000. However, this gain was due to a combination of a change in the makeup of the jobs as well as the volatility of results from the small sample sizes involved. This year, a far higher fraction of the jobs for master's chemists is in traditionally higher paying industry. The median salary for these industrial M.S. positions went up from $38,000 last year to $39,000 this year.


New B.S. chemists versus chemical engineers:

A similar consideration accounts for a seeming anomaly in the starting salaries for inexperienced Ph.D. chemists this year. For men, the median is $50,500; for women, it is $38,500. However, a higher fraction of the men found jobs with industry, which offers doctoral chemists far higher salaries than are available to such graduates just entering the lower reaches of the academic profession. The median salaries for the industrial doctoral jobs themselves show gender equality - $54,000 for men and $55,000 for women.

As would be expected, the amount of work experience has considerable impact on the salaries of new chemistry graduates. For instance, the median for a bachelor-level chemist with less than a year of work experience is $25,000. For bachelor-level chemists with three or more years of experience, it is $32,850. For M.S. chemists, the parallel gap is from $36,000 to $42,000.

The grade-point average of chemistry graduates with bachelor's degrees doesn't seem to have much impact on their salaries. This year, those with an A average have a median salary of $26,000, just $1,000 higher than for colleagues with a C average. For chemical engineering, grades of B.S. graduates apparently count for more - a $41,800 median for those with an A average compared with $36,000 for those with a C average.

New B.S. chemists don't seem to lose very much by having the job title of 'technician.' At one time, some ACS members were concerned that such a title was inappropriate for a chemist with a four-year professional degree. The latest survey indicates that inexperienced bachelor-level graduates with the title have a median salary of $25,000, the same as for all such graduates.


Unemployment among new B.S. chemists stay high.

One of the more sobering aspects of the new survey for chemists is how poorly new chemistry graduates fare compared with chemical engineers. For instance, the median starting salary for inexperienced bachelor-level chemists of $25,000 falls far short of the $39,100 median for inexperienced bachelor-level chemical engineers. Only about 60% of the chemists jobs are in industry, compared with about 90% for the chemical engineering jobs. But in this case, this is not a factor. The median of $27,500 for the industrial chemists jobs falls almost equally shy of the corresponding $40,000 median for the industrial chemical engineering jobs.

However, it can be pointed out that the salary lag is smaller at the doctoral level - a median of $50,000 for all new chemistry Ph.D.s compared with $56,000 for doctoral chemical engineering graduates. For all master's levels, the difference is between $38,000 and $44,400.

The findings from the ACS survey for both chemists and chemical engineers are reinforced by data from the 1994 - 95 salary survey of the National Association of Colleges & Employers (NACE), formerly known as the College Placement Council. This survey examines starting salary offers made to graduates and it is based on information provided by 136 university and college career service offices.

This new survey puts the mean starting salary offer to bachelor-level chemistry graduates at $29,300. For M.S. chemists, the mean is $38,000 and for Ph.D. chemists it is $52,900. Considering the very different sources of the data in the two surveys, these results are reasonably close to the medians of $26,000, $38,000, and $50,000 reported in the ACS survey. For chemical engineers, the agreement is even closer. NACE and ACS numbers for bachelor-level chemical engineers are $39,900 and $40,000, respectively. For master's, they are $41,800 and $44,400, and for Ph.D.s, they are $57,300 and $56,000, respectively.


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