New tool highlights career options for physics PhDs

Fairly early into my graduate studies at Cornell University, I realized I did not want to become a physics professor. I remember telling a friend that I wanted to do something that involved continually learning new things, interacting with people, and getting the satisfaction of a frequent sense of completion.

After earning my PhD, I did a postdoc and explored becoming an editor or science writer. I was very lucky and landed a job that launched me into a career that I love: writing physics-related news. My friend, for her part, finished her PhD in theoretical physics, did a stint as a consultant at McKinsey & Co, and then, after many years working in the financial sector, went back to school and became a veterinarian.

Things worked out fine for us, as they do for many other people who find their way into rewarding careers. But the number of physics PhDs produced far outpaces the number of academic openings. Not everyone can—or wants to—follow in the footsteps of their thesis adviser.

Patrick Mulvey of the Statistical Research Center at the American Institute of Physics (which publishes Physics Today) observes that “professors often have the mind-set that ‘I am making professors.’” And despite lots of discussion about the wide range of careers open to people with a physics background, he adds, “some members of the community still don’t embrace” promoting other career options.

As a step in that direction, Mulvey aggregated data he and his colleagues had previously collected to create a tool for new PhDs to learn about employment options. A pie chart shows the jobs taken by more than 700 newly minted US PhDs from the classes of 2009–14. Each slice represents the proportion of PhDs working in a particular broad field and can be excavated for details about employer names, job titles, and needed skills.

The pie is divided into 10 general categories. Just 14% of new physics PhDs took potentially permanent positions in physics education—a category that includes teacher, physics writer, and tutor along with university positions. Those graduates work for more than 100 different employers. Physicists choosing a career in computer software are employed at traditional giants such as Google, IBM, and Raytheon. But they also work at Airbnb and more than 50 other companies. In the non-STEM category , trained physicists have taken jobs at employers as varied as the City of Phoenix and the US Air Force.

So far, the employment chart doesn’t include salary information. That may eventually be added to the tool, which Mulvey says will be updated periodically. A report by the Statistical Research Center found that for those who received their physics PhDs in 2013 and 2014, the median starting salary at potentially permanent positions in the private sector was $99 000. Postdocs made a median of $65 500 at government labs and $48 000 at universities and university-affiliated research institutes. Starting salaries for new physics bachelor’s recipients in the US typically range from $26 000 to $75 000, depending on employment sector.