Scientific employment in a tightening economy

Despite the tightening economic situation, most scientists working in physics and related areas are doing relatively well. The latest statistics on members of the nine scientific societies that constitute the American Institute of Physics show overall salaries keeping pace with inflation, and the unemployment rate remaining very low at 1%. However, the slow shift away from teaching as a principal work activity appears to have accelerated. Accordingly, university employment is declining vis‐à‐vis industrial employment. At the same time, members of the scientific societies are continuing their westward geographical shift, particularly to the sunbelt states and away from several northern regions, most notably the north central. Although the membership of the societies is gradually aging, new members are joining, frequently from backgrounds quite different from those of their predecessors. Vacuum science, high polymer physics, chemical physics and optics are four subfields that gained a larger number of new members during the past two years.