The job situation for 2006 chemistry graduates remains “reasonably good” and similar to what it was in the previous two years, but full-time jobs remain less plentiful than they were for graduates during the second half of the booming 1990s, reports the American Chemical Society (ACS).
The median salary for inexperienced bachelor’s graduates with full-time, permanent employment and less than a year of technical work before graduation remained unchanged at $35,000, according to the latest ACS annual survey of the employment status and salaries of new chemistry graduates. The median is the point at which half of the salaries are above a certain point and half are below that point. The survey appeared in the Dec. 3 issue of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the Society’s weekly newsmagazine.
Master’s graduates, meanwhile, posted a $2,400, or 5 percent one-year gain to $47,400, while the median salary for Ph.D. graduates dipped all the way to $60,000 from $72,400 for 2005 graduates, a decline of 17 percent.
Two-year salary changes for bachelors’ and master’s graduates were somewhat nearer the norm, CEN reports. Salaries for 2006 bachelor’s graduates were 8 percent higher than for those who graduated in 2004, while for master’s grads the increase was 9 percent.
Salaries for 2006 Ph.D. grads dropped 8 percent from their 2004 counterparts.
For the full story in C&EN: http://pubs.acs.org/cen/acsnews/85/8549salaries.html
The American Chemical Society — the world’s largest scientific society — is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
Chemical & Engineering News