C&EN Washington

The overall employment and salary situation for chemists this year retains the good news-bad news flavor it has had for the past three years.

The good news:

Median salaries for chemists as a group continue to increase quite strongly, and the gains are pervasive throughout the profession.

Individual chemists continue to post a median annual increase in their base salaries of about 5%--well above the inflation rate of less than 2%.

For the second successive year, starting salaries for new chemistry graduates at all degree levels have posted unusually big gains, with more full-time jobs available, especially higher paying ones in industry.

And the starting salaries of new chemistry doctorates continue to be reasonably competitive with those of new doctorates in other disciplines.

The bad news:

Despite the improved employment situation for new graduates, joblessness among all chemists, as measured by the American Chemical Society, has remained unchanged over the past year at 2.3%. This leaves it higher than the 2.0% it was two years ago, and at a surprisingly high level in light of the very strong and protracted boom in the economy that has brought the lowest overall U.S. unemployment rate in a generation. Since ACS started measuring it 27 years ago, unemployment among its members has varied between 0.9% and 3.2%.

Table: Median salary of ACS survey respondents up almost across the board in 1999

These trends mean that the big advantage that chemists have traditionally held over the U.S. workforce in general in terms of lower unemployment continues to decline. Today, at 2.3%, the jobless rate among chemists is a little more than half the overall unemployment rate. As recently as 1989, it was only one-fifth as large--1% compared with 5%.

These are the major conclusions that can be gleaned from the data contained in four salary and employment surveys conducted over the past 12 months. Two of these are the 1999 versions of ACS's annual surveys of the salary and employment situation for new chemistry graduates (C&EN, March 1, page 14) and of its members who are in the domestic workforce (C&EN, Aug. 2, page 28).

The third survey is a National Science Foundation study of the characteristics of doctoral scientists and engineers (C&EN, Feb. 8, page 11). The fourth is a truncated version of a multisociety survey comparing the starting salaries of new doctoral graduates in several disciplines and reported here for the first time.

Table: Median salary for full professors at Ph.D. schools exceeds $100,000

ACS's latest starting salary survey puts the median full-time salary of inexperienced Ph.D. chemists who graduated during the 1997-98 academic year at $59,300 as of the week of Oct. 12, 1998. This is 10% higher than the comparable median of $54,000 for the 1996-97 class and 32% higher than the $45,000 for the 1995-96 class. For the survey, inexperienced is defined as having less than one year of professional work experience prior to graduation.

The increases for newly graduated B.S. and M.S. degree chemists over these two years have been less spectac ular but still solid: up 13% to $38,500 for master's degree holders and up 18% to $29,500 for bachelor's.

(The median salary is that which is equaled or exceeded by one-half of the sample. Using medians avoids the distortions that a few very high salaries can bring to means.)

According to the survey, the median salary for 1997-98 doctoral chemists starting in industry was $60,000. For those with government jobs, it was $53,000. And for those starting in junior positions in academia, other than postdocs, it was $35,500. The median stipend for postdocs was $26,000.

Table: New B.S. chemists flock to graduate school, chemical engineers take jobs

The huge 32% increase over the past two years in the median full-time starting salary for all new Ph.D. chemists is due in part to a shift in the profile of jobs available. For the 1995-96 class, 60% of the jobs taken were in industry, 27% were in academia. For 1997-98 this split was 73% to 16%.

In addition to this trend toward better paying industry jobs, 1998 chemistry graduates also enjoyed an increase in the absolute number of jobs available. For instance, of the 1998 Ph.D. class, 44% found full-time employment while 45% took postdocs. This compares with only 35% of the 1997 graduating class finding full-time jobs and 51% taking postdoctoral positions.

The latest ACS survey of its membership contains other encouraging salary information. For example, the median base salary for all chemist respondents this year was $68,000 as of March 1, 1999. This is 4.6% higher than the $65,000 median from the previous survey. It is also up 7.9% from the 1997 median of $63,000.

However, it must be noted that a median salary increase (a relatively small number) calculated as the difference between median salaries (relatively large numbers) measured by surveys conducted a year apart and using different random samples of a population should be interpreted with care.

Sidebar: ACS and the careers of its members

Nonetheless, the widespread nature of the salary increases reflected in recent membership surveys indicates that chemists as a group have been enjoying salary increases substantially in excess of the rate of inflation since 1997. This follows almost no salary growth in 1996.

Normally, one would expect the median salary for any group as well established and as large as the chemical profession to rise at very close to the rate of inflation. However, the salaries of chemists as individuals rise substantially faster. In addition to inflation, they reflect gains related to growing experience, increased professional responsibilities, and promotions.

This is brought out by responses to a question on the ACS member survey questionnaire seeking salaries as of both March 1 of the current year and March 1 of the previous year. With this approach, median salary increases are more consistent and reliable, both year-to-year and by type of employer, because the data come from the same sample of respondents.

For this year, the median salary increase for all respondents measured this way was 4.8%. This is very close to 4.7% in 1998 and 4.5% in 1997. For those in industry this year, the gain was 5.0%; for those in both academia and govern ment, 4.2%. In the previous survey, the increase was 5.0% for those in industry, and 4.0% for those in academia or government. The only big variation in these increases is a not unexpected decline with age. For this year's survey, those 20 to 29 years of age had a 9.2% median increase and those in the 60 to 69 age bracket had a 3.7% gain.

Table: Salary differences between highest and lowest paid chemists increase steadily with age

This year's membership survey indicates that 92.9% of chemists in the workforce have full-time jobs, 2.7% are employed part time, 2.1% are on postdocs or fellowships, and 2.3% are unemployed but seeking jobs. The total of 7.1% with other than full-time employment is exactly the same as it was the previous year, but down from the recent high of 8.9% in 1995. However, this figure is still clearly higher than the 4.7% in 1989, the most recent really healthy year for chemical employment.

The persistence of the historically relatively high rate of unemployment for chemists probably reflects a number of systemic changes in the employment situation of the past decade. For instance, the one-employer career is becoming a rarity. This means more turnover of the workforce and a higher percentage of chemists between jobs at any one time.

Early retirements and other voluntary or involuntary separations, especially in industry, continue to elevate the unemployment rate for experienced chemists. Responses to this year's survey indicate that the unemployment rate for all chemists aged 40 to 49 years is 1.9%. For those 50 to 59, it is 2.6%, and for those 60 to 69, 3.2%. For industrial chemists only, these rates are, respectively, 2.2%, 4.0%, and 6.4%.

The NSF survey is the 13th in a biennial series started in 1973. It is based on responses to a questionnaire mailed to 55,000 doctoral scientists in the workforce, which asked for data as of the week of April 15, 1997.

The employment profile it yields for chemists with doctorates is that 94.0% have full- or part-time jobs, 4.0% are on postdocs or fellowships, and 2.0% are unemployed but seeking work. This is extremely close to the parallel breakdown from the 1997 ACS membership survey of 94.6% working, 3.7% on postdocs, and 1.7% unemployed.

The 94.0% employment rate for chemists compares with the highs from the NSF survey of 97.4% for social scientists and 97.3% for mathematical scientists and the low of 86.2% for biological scientists.

The 2.0% unemployment rate for chemists was the highest except for what NSF identifies as environmental life scientists, at 2.9%. Other jobless rates ranged from 1.7% for physicists down to a low of 0.6% for mathematical scientists. For all sciences it was 1.2%.

Chemists were at the extreme in the number working for private for-profit organizations (essentially industry/business), a high of 55.7%, and in academia, a low of 31.6%. Of all respondents to this survey, 27.0% were in the private for-profit sector, 51.1% were in academia.

This year's study, which covers the employment and salary situation of 1997-98 doctoral graduates in five disciplines, is the continuation of a program coordinated by the Commission on Professionals in Science & Technology (CPST) over the previous three years.

This earlier effort involved development of a set of questions to be used by all the societies involved. ACS and 13 other societies participated in the survey of 1997 graduates. This followed a pilot study of 1996 graduates that involved ACS and five other societies.

Table: The almost half of last year's Ph.D. chemistry graduates who took full-time jobs

ACS's contribution to this effort is the doctoral part of its annual starting salary survey, which covers both chemistry and chemical engineering.

CPST was not involved in the latest study of 1998 graduates, and participation fell back to ACS and four other societies. These were the American Geological Institute, the American Geophysical Union, the American Institute of Physics, and the American Mathematical Society.

The study reveals that the $59,500 median full-time salary for all new doctoral chemists entering the workforce in 1998 was less than the $66,000 for chemical engineers, essentially the same as the $60,000 for physicists, ahead of the $53,700 for earth and space scientists, and well ahead of the $41,000 median for mathematicians, most of whom (53%) took lower paying academic jobs.

For all the disciplines, the median salary for graduates with full-time jobs in industry was between the $60,000 for chemists and the high of $67,000 for chemical engineers. For the relatively few taking government positions, the range was $52,300 (geophysicists) to $59,500 (physicists).

The median stipend for postdoc chemists, $26,000, was low in comparison with postdocs in other disciplines, which ranged from $30,000 to $39,000.

As to the career direction of new doctorates, 48% of chemists found full-time work and 45% took postdoc positions. This compares with a 72%/24% split for graduates in industrially inclined chemical engineering.

Table: Individual chemists post a median salary gain of 4.8%

The chemist class was the most diverse by gender, 34% female. Least diverse was the physics class at 13% female.

All of the graduate classes were marked by a disproportionately high number of Asians compared with their representation in the general population. For the chemistry class it was 25%, and for chemical engineers it was an even higher 30%. It was lower for geophysics, 13%. For blacks, the range was from 0 to 2%. In answer to a separate question, between 2% (physicists) and 5% (mathematicians) identified themselves as Hispanic.

Table: Pay of B.S. chemists in industry plateaus after about 20 years

The classes appeared to be about equally satisfied with their jobs. On a scale from 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree), responses to three questions averaged close to 1.7. These asked if jobs were professionally challenging, related to field, and commensurate with training. The overall response to a question asking if the job was what was expected at the beginning of graduate training was less enthusiastic at an average of about 2.5. Physicists, in general, tended to show somewhat less job satisfaction than graduates in the other four fields.

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Copyright © 1999 American Chemical Society