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New chemistry, chemical engineering graduates find strong job market

Wages rose for new chemistry and chemical engineering graduates for the fourth consecutive year, according to a report published in the September 3 edition of Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.

Data for the starting salary report is drawn from a survey sent to about 13,000 chemists and chemical engineers who earned their degrees between July 1999 and June 2000 requesting information about their salaries as of October 9, 2000. About 2,400 chemists and 1,100 chemical engineers responded.

Highlights of the report:

The median base salary is $34,000 for chemists with bachelor’s degrees, $45,000 for master’s graduates, and $65,000 for new doctorates.

For chemical engineers, the median base salary is $50,000 for bachelor’s graduates, $56,700 for those with master’s degrees, and $72,000 for new doctorates.

The proportion of women chemists continues to rise. At 52 percent, women comprise more than half of the bachelor’s degree graduates in chemistry, up from 49 percent in 1998-99. At the master’s level, 48 percent of the graduates are women, rising from 44 percent the preceding year, and of new doctorates, 35 percent are women, up from 33 percent the year before.

Minorities are approaching a quarter of all chemistry graduates, with Asians topping the list at 12 percent, Hispanics at 6 percent, blacks at 4 percent, and American Indians under 0.5 percent of all respondents. Although the proportion of black and Hispanic chemistry graduates is low relative to their overall numbers — each group makes up about 13 percent of the American population — these graduation numbers still indicate progress toward equal representation. Currently, only about 2.6 percent of all chemists are Hispanic, and 1.9 percent are black.

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