Unemployment is down, salaries are up for US chemists, C&EN reports

04-Aug-2005

Unemployment among U.S. chemists has dropped to 3.1 percent this year from a record high of 3.6 percent in 2004, according to an American Chemical Society (ACS) survey reported in the Aug. 1 issue of Chemical & Engineering News, ACS's weekly newsmagazine.

Median salaries for bachelor's level chemists this year are up from $61,000 to $64,000, or 4.9 percent; for master's graduates, from $71,000 to $75,000, or 5.6 percent; and for Ph.D. chemists, from $90,000 to $93,800, or 4.2 percent, the survey found. The increase for all chemists was from a median of $82,000 last year to $83,000 this year. The median is the point at which half of the salaries are above and half are below.

The Society's annual employment survey shows that there has been a dramatic shift in where chemists have worked over the past 20 years. Two decades ago the majority were employed by chemical and chemical-related companies; today the majority have biologically-related jobs.

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