Recent Chemist salary takes big decline.... 34

straydog snip

snip

Nothing gives. Nothing has changed in 20 years. ACS Official truth is that 95% of chemists are gainfully employed. That stat means anybody with a BS-BA or better earning any kind of income. If we consider "employed" to be a full time permanent position with a minimal benefits package, in chemistry, chemical employment is about 60% overall. Few bench workers and lower Debt Management above the age of 50 retain industrial employment.

The ACS has powerfully lobbied for the exclusion of "foreign workers" and the inclusion of diversity hires. The obvious result has been the movement of research and development offshore. You can insert an idiot (a "visionary") into an executive position and make it work - Bush the Lesser. Putting Shawanda X. Coon-Wetback into a lab doesn't get you anything at all, especially when you can relocate to India without the EPA and OSHA plus (0.1%)(1.1 billion)=1.1 millon geniuses willing to slave away at $(US)5-hr.

The drugged-out nightmare holding a STOP sign at a construction site has a higher salary, better benefits, and more job security than a 5-year NIH post-doc. The blue collar worker didn't waste an additional 11 years of no retained income in university education. Odds are he abandoned public education when he realized what a load of crap it is. Which circumstance do you think holds for a 2005 high school graduate?

1) He can solve a quadratic equation, or 2) He knows about anal safe love. Uncle Al says, "Rather than foster brilliance, we allocate for its supression."

-- Uncle Al (Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)