Just how difficult is it for someone with a STEM PhD to find a job in the industry these days?

I'm not 100% sure, but I have given some thoughts to this. I believe that you can find a specialized job in the industry related with your field where you will compete for the position with other Ph.D people (industry Ph.D jobs are very different compared to undergrad jobs, so you don't compete with undergraduates). The problem is that these jobs are scarce, so depending on where you live the odds are that you will have to move far away.

My A2A2A (answer to ask-to-answer) to : Been in so called STEM all my adult life, i.e. science focused in high school, BS&MS in chemical engineeing, PhD in materials science engineeing, worked for a year during BS and been working in the industry for 9 months now, actively involved with professional organizations, so I'm quite qualified to answer this question. To begin off, I want to say that there are *huge* difference in terms of job prospects across different STEM fields. I just looked up the wiki definition of STEM and apparently it is a category to improve US's competitiveness and readiness for high-tech jobs. If that's the case then the politicians again came up with a stupid acronym. Because the "S" and "M" barely correlates to high tech jobs. In general, T & E the job outlook is quite good, versus the S & M (funny term!) is the opposite. Myself is in the engineering domain hence very familiar with it, being an engineer I work and befriend with a lot of scientists so I can also comment on that. Let's start with engineering. For things like computer engineering and chemical engineering, it's very easy to find jobs. For CE you are likely to be choosing different job offers from Silicon Valley upon graduation (as we all know, programmer candidates are in high demand). For chemical engineering, you will likely move to Texas or some midwest cities and work as R&D scientist for the oil&energy sector. For some bizarre things like nuclear engineering, business engineeing, systems engineeing the job outcome is harder to predict but finding a job in the industry shouldn't be hard. One factor is if you are interested in the defense industry, US citizenship with a clean background is usually required. For science PhDs, all I can say is "good luck" in finding job in industry. If you are getting degrees in pure sciences like physics, chemistry, biology, then it does NOT look good. Those fields are too old school for modern day industry. These days there are more specialized disciplines for certain fields, e.g. For pharmaceutical jobs there are PharmD's, for medical jobs there are BME (biomedical engineeing) and biochemists. But to be fair, if you are doing PhD in pure science like physics, chemistry, or biology, then getting a job in the industry should NOT be your main goal. In the industry, it's all about making products and profit, not advancing science. For the pure science PhDs, the typical route is doing postdoc and then transition into academia. For mathematics, I can not comment much, as we do not come across many mathematicians, which might just be the sign that the job prospect for them in the industry is bad. Seriously, if I have a co-worker who did PhD in math, I won't even know what/how could he be useful on, there are programs like Maple/MATLAB/Mathematica designed to solve complex things.  :D   I've heard if you are a really genius in mathematics, you could get high salary job at Wall St., or think-tank type firms. Otherwise, pick up a masters degree in industry-friendly fields such as statistics/actuary is very common to help securing a job. Regarding Your other two points: 1) competition from the undergraduates and 2) lack of experience. Both are not good reasons because for 1), undergrads apply to completely different job postings than PhDs. Masters could have some overlap but you did not mention masters. Undergrads are for entry level positions, they start at lower positions in a company with low salary and work their way up,  and it is true that it's much easier for them to find jobs than PhDs. Think of it as it's easier to find a waitress job than a manager job. PhDs on another hand, are quite expensive, and often times wayyyy too specialized. PhDs are trained to do be independent researcher, what that means is that you work on problems that no one else worked on before. It is said that if you can understand someone's dissertation title then that's probably not a quality thesis. Since we are so specialized, makes it very hard to find a well fitting job. For example, someone spent 5 years working on the optimization of 3d signal processing of underwater military submarine, may have trouble landing a job at car company. We are too specialized, unlike undergrads are blank paper, companies usually just hire them and train them from the beginning for the skill-set they need. Your point 2), true to a certain extend. Just so you know, 5 years of PhD IS considered working experience. Because in STEM you do get paid during your study. And your day to day life is basically a full time job. Now I was just in the job market last year, and I know with the current economy, "X years of actual industry experience" is becoming a common requirement. This is a sad thing, but there is nothing you can do. With many experienced laid-off workers available on the market, of course the companies rather hire them than the fresh grads. Also keep in mind that some PhDs do have prior industry experience, some folks realized they want to get their phd after working for sometime (such as myself). Hope this helps.

The answers so far are pretty much in line with my opinion, but I'll go into specifics: Science: it depends on the field.  Life sciences are generally rough, and you'll find stories about them taking sales positions and being paid less than business undergraduates.  Some go to agriculture (e.g. Monsanto or Syngenta) or pharmaceuticals.  Chemistry can be lucrative for some, but also rough for others.  Physicists will generally have to find something other than their dissertation area. The main determinant is whether your knowledge and skills can be applied practically and rigorously: for example, I hear of biology PhDs whose work was theoretical and based on unrealistic assumptions, don't have laboratory skills beyond that of a freshman, and refuse to use tools as simple as an automatic pipette (which, as you might guess, is generally much more accurate than a manual pipette).  They tend to not do so well.  On the other hand, someone is making all the new drugs and chemicals, so there's definitely a market for the best ones. Technology: I'm not sure what PhD areas fall only into this category, so I'll address computer science here.  Most computer science PhDs that can code have no problem because of lack of programmer supply.  Many computer science PhDs work on problems in industry research and are in high demand. Engineering: some engineering PhDs are paid better than others.  Computer and electrical engineering PhDs seem to have no major problems getting jobs if they're competent.  Same goes for chemical, industrial, materials, mechanical, and nuclear (US citizens: plenty of opportunities in the Navy).  Civil might be harder, but I don't know many PhDs in civil engineering.  For Bioengineering, it again depends, but it seems to have been overhyped, given how much trouble the ones I know have in finding positions that pay reasonably well, and how many I see applying for software engineering positions. Mathematics: Again, it depends on practical knowledge.  If you're in applied mathematics, know a good amount of statistics, program, and pick up some computer science knowledge, particularly machine learning, you'll be in good shape as a so-called "data scientist."  For theorists, I have no clue. I'm a CompE PhD and did my dissertation on GPGPU optimization, with experience in performance analysis and optimization on several other platforms, mostly real systems instead of fake/simulated ones.  That's practical and uncommon experience.  As far as I know, I haven't competed with recent undergraduates for positions.

I think it's fear mongering since even with the bad economy, I haven't seen any particular difficulty in physics Ph.D.'s with any sort of computer experience getting a technical job.  (Now, if it's the job that they wanted, that's a different issue). There are tons of jobs in computer programming, and physics Ph.D.'s usually have the qualifications for those. One problem that Ph.D.s run into is that they very often are rejected for being *overqualified*.