Career prospects for physics majors

I'm starting physics at university in about 5 months. When I visiting one university to see how well I might like it there, I had a conversation with one of the professors about the employment value of a physics degree. He said something to the effect of "As a physicist you're very desirable. the only one who knows more math than you is the mathematician, the only one who knows more engineering than you is the engineer, the only one who knows more computer science than you is the computer scientist." This impressed me and made me more optimistic about my prospects, until afterwards I put on my economics hat and figured that by comparative advantage I'd be better off just doing math or engineering or compsci.

Physical theories represent pinnacles of human achievement

It's intellectually stimulating

It has a reputation for being a subject that smart people do

3 biggest reasons I chose physics right there. Have I made a horrible mistake?

I have the impression that a non-negligible number of physics graduates (perhaps more among physics PhDs?) go into finance and do very well there. If that's right, perhaps it should be called out explicitly; it might be a useful counterpoint to the alleged relatively low earnings, for those who care about that. (With the usual set of pros and cons: can be scarily well paid; may be very hard work; many finance jobs have zero or negative social value; etc.)

My guess is that most people who study physics at university have some ambition to be academic physicists, discover new fundamental laws of nature, etc., and don't really care that much about money -- but if it happens to be the case that there's a fairly natural path from studying physics to getting rich, then mentioning the fact may be helpful to students who care more about money than the average.

Well, to be fair, you're not exactly painting the bleakest picture here. I mean, physics is ninth on that list of mid-career earnings out of 129 majors, and is pretty much indistinguishable from computer science. An extra $10000/year or whatever on top of an already pretty good salary doesn't hold much appeal to me - certainly not enough to make me wish I had done engineering. Having said that though, you're right - if you do physics, you probably won't get a job in physics, and you'll probably make less than you would had you done engineering. This is valuable information and smart high school students should definitely know it.

I wonder, though, to what extent physics degrees are actually displacing engineering degrees. They surely are to some extent - if physics were eliminated as a major tomorrow, no doubt a good fraction of physicists would migrate over to engineering. And then, yes, they would be better off than before in terms of earnings potential. But plenty would go to other majors with even lower earning potentials, like applied math ($96200), math ($88800), chemistry ($84100), or philosophy ($78300). So if you're advocating for people not to go into physics, I would say you should be very clear about what alternatives you're recommending. In many ways physics seems like a pretty good compromise, if you're intellectually curious - you get to study an interesting subject for four years, and then make almost as much as an engineer.

I would guess your estimate for 50% of phds working as scientists in academia or industry is skewed by the recently slackened job market. Physicists are great utility players, so when a field has a shortage they tend to fill in the slack. As the job market continues to stay pretty awful, there are fewer shortages. In my cohort, less than 10% are still in any kind of scientific field (but we largely came out of our second postdocs right into the great recession, so we got hit especially hard).

I would add that when someone describes the "flexibility" of a physics major, they are putting spin on a negative. Every physics major working as a programmer or on an IT help desk is a physics major not working in science- philosophy looks similarly flexible.

My advice to physics majors is consistently this- those physics majors that get hired by finance companies? Odds are, they actually took some finance classes or picked up enough of a financial background to interview with them. Those physics majors hired by engineering companies? They probably took some engineering classes where they learned at least some design skills. Those physics majors working for insurance companies? They took actuarial tests. Software engineers took programming classes, etc.

If you put your head down and excel at the physics major and physics research, but do not take any outside-the-major classes, you will have an incredibly difficult time finding a job without some additional work. No one will hire you BECAUSE you are a physics major, instead they will hire you because you know something useful and, as a bonus, you were a physics major.

EDIT: Also, be very careful with the APS numbers, especially for phds. The survey response rate is abysmal, and a large portion of the responses they do get are sent in by advisers rather than students.

I guess that education systems differ quite a lot between different countries. So where you do your physics studies could make a significant difference. The OP is probably somewhat USA-centric. In Sweden there are two major undergraduate programs in physics. The general university physics program, and the engineering physics program. The latter is an engineering program and you are awarded an engineering degree. The contents, however, is mostly a physics program. For those going into an academic physics career it is as good a starting ground as the general university physics program. For those going into an engineering career, it is in some respects as good as or better than the more traditional engineering programs, and in some worse. The difference is that you learn less specific engineering, the advantage is that you learn more basic physics and mathematics, and general modelling skills. In USA the tradition seems to be more of traditional pure university physics programs. How about other places?

Physics Ph.D.-s are to a large extent recruited from the engineering physics program. A large fraction (I do not have actual reference here, somewhat anecdotic evidence) of physics Ph.D.-s go later to an engineering carrier, and that is made easier by the fact that those coming from an engineering physics background actually have a formal M.Sc. engineering degree.

The reason some continue to Ph.D. varies of course. But for many the dominating reason is: for fun. They like learning about the real world, this is an important reason (I think) that many are attracted to physics; to understand more about the actual real world that we are living in at a fundamental level. But not just the very fundamental level, an aspect of understanding the real world by actual modelling (mathematical modelling that is systematically tested against real empirical data) is also important, be it at a more fundamental or a more phenomenological level (depending what field of physics you go to). The second reason is they like problem solving, being able to work for a few years on a non-trivial problem but still realistically feasible due to supervision by a professor. Some have already from the start an idea for a carrier after the Ph.D., for some in academia, while others self-idetify as engineers and see the Ph.D. just as a temporary fun before they take up their engineering carrier. While others have a more carefree attitude and don't want to take out future worries as carrier choicies before that day actually arrives. Of course many by choice or necessity (or unexpected oppertunity in few lucky cases) change their carrier plans later, even had they one to begin with. In particular, competition for jobs in academia is fierce, and many who wished for that end up in engineering even so. But that is one of the ideas behind the system. There are no sufficiently reliable methods to predict who will be good enough for an academic research carrier, so many more Ph.D.-s than is needed for that has to be produced. Anyway, since most can get reasonably good jobs as e.g. engineers the cost is not that high, so provided they have fun enough during their time as graduate students it is worth it.

The value of a physics Ph.D for engineering. is to a large extent more skills in problem solving and modelling generally. The value as an engineer of the more actual physics that you know as a Ph.D. as compared to an M.Sc is probably only rarely of significant value. Several other small but significant skills are also acquired, e.g., Ph.D.-s have often significantly (well, somewhat...) better English writing skills by having to write articles for actual publication. The value of engineering physics as compared to a more standard engineering program is similar, though the difference is smaller, and here some of the larger physics knowledge is slightly more often of actual practical use (though I think that more often the stronger training in applied mathematics is a more important advantage of engineering physics as compared to a traditional engineering program, but those are not independent; the strong training in applied mathematics comes from doing actual problem solving in physics).

Whether it is good or not to go into physics depends on your preferences and interests, and your skill profile. My guess from personal experience by myself and acquaintancies; Apart from personal interest, if your talent is for acquiring general modelling skills reasonably well, then going to engineering physics is probably better than going to traditional engineering. Many who go there do, but a significant number don't completely "get it" despite being tought it and formally passing the course exams. For those a more traditional engineering program would have been better. As for continuing for a Ph.D., for most students they should do this if they are among the best in class as M.Sc.-s, and if physics is what they really enjoy in life. For most Ph.D.-s there is a rather large but not very large cost of doing a Ph.D., You delay your engineering carrier by approximately 5/2 years, based on a simple toy modell where a Ph.D. takes 5 years and a year as a physics Ph.D-student is worth a half year engineering experience engineering-carrier-wise. (The lower salary during the very time as Ph.D.-student is no real cost, because it is well compensated by the lower expensives by the life-style as a Ph.D.-student.) For me and many of my acquaintances, that was more than well worth the cost, while for others of course it would not be.

Thanks for putting in the time and effort to generate this. I was curious about this when I was choosing my major and I wish I had access to a resource like this.

I think that people on LessWrong are more likely to go to elite colleges and degree programs and would therefore have better job prospects than the national average.

Money is hardly the only metric of what makes a good major. Indeed, I am surprised to see discussions here that distinguish between even $50,000/yr and $100,000/yr as if this was obvious. In my college days, I lived on less than $1000/month (not counting tuition) without ever being concerned with it. I suppose my experience may not be universal, although I would hardly imagine it would be unique around here.

I was also extremely lucky to major in physics because I wanted to, and to never have had reasons to question that as a good enough (even if possibly circular) reason. I didn't care that engineers would probably make more money right out of school, the engineers were generally dull compared to the physicists, philosophers, historians, economists, and english majors. I actually did take enough math to be a minor, took nearly enough econ to get a minor, but wound up "officially" using Philosophy as a minor. not once did I check the employment prospects of Philosophy minors, or even the prospects of Physics/Philosophy minors. Who cared. I was learning stuff I found interesting and having great conversations with smart people all of the time.

I can see myself gearing up to go on and on and on, so let me cut it short. At every step of the way I did the thing I found most interesting. At no point did I ever risk missing a meal from lack of higher income. I drifted into electrical engineering because I liked the things I built for experimentation better than the results I got with those things. I am past mid-career i suppose (57 years old) but I make more than any of the bars on that money chart by major. I am happy about that but if I made less, I suspect I would still be pretty happy, possibly about something else.

Physics, to be a physicist per se I would say you need a PhD. And you need to be smart, smarter than an MS Engineer who will probably make more than you. You have to not be doing it for the money because there are SO many ways to make more money with the same level of smartness. If you do this, you will never be poor and you will never be bored.

This makes me want to start a company whose sole strategic insight is to hire absurdly smart and conscientious people who are willing to work for comfortable middle class pay by tempting mid-career (postdoc or late-stage Phd student) physicists away from the academic career path.