These improvements ended a decade of relatively high unemployment, when chemists suffered through a poor job market while the overall U.S. economy boomed.
The Society sent its annual salary survey to about 20 percent of its members — or 22,400 people in 2001 — requesting information about their employment and income as of March 1. This year, more than 9,000 chemists and chemical engineers in the workforce responded.
Highlights of the report:
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Salaries for chemists increased across the board, to a median of $73,000 from $70,000 in 2000. That 4.3 percent increase puts chemists comfortably ahead of inflation, which rose by 2.9 percent in the same time period.
Ph.D. chemists earned a median salary of $82,200, chemists with master’s degrees earned $65,000, and chemists with bachelor’s degrees earned $55,000.
Women earned a median income of only $60,000 — 77 percent as much as men — but when age, education, and specialty are factored in, the data show that women earn equal pay for equal work. Women remain underrepresented, however, in the more prestigious, higher-paying jobs such as R&D management.
Unemployment among chemists rests at 1.5 percent, the lowest level in a decade, and low numbers of chemists in post-docs and part-time positions have pushed the percentage of working chemists with a full-time job to its highest level since 1990: 94.6 percent.
Job turnover among chemists, which increased in the 1990s, is likely to continue to be high. Still, high turnover does not mean that the job market for chemists is weak. The Society’s employment clearinghouses had more openings than applicants during the last year, and the pharmaceutical and biotech industries continued to hire chemists.
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