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Monday, June 7, 2010

Physics Major = Job

I am an astrophysicist. When I tell people that they look at me funny and ask me how on earth I make money doing that, albeit in somewhat more polite terms. My brother in a mechanical engineer. When he tells people that they assume that large corporations are dropping bags of money on his doorstep at night in the vain hope that one day he might design their next generation of widgets.

Well it turns out that physicists actually get jobs - seriously! From the AIP's Statistical Data Center:One thing to note here: the national unemployment rate had yet to skyrocket when this data was collected. In June 2008 (roughly when the data above was taken), the national rate was only 5.6%, so while physics majors were doing better than the average American at finding jobs, it wasn't phenomenally better.

5 comments:

  1. "ask me how on earth I make money doing that"

    You should say: actually the government likes spending billions to fund people to study stars all day. It's a great deal. :)

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  2. Joe,

    When people ask me who pays me to study the sun I usually tell them that they do - via the IRS and NASA, of course. Of course then I tell them that what they are really funding is technology development for their children, which generally makes people feel better than spending their tax money on the sun.

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  3. Nick,

    You can always remind them that the Sun is really Ba'al and we as a country must pay homage... or we will upset him.

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  4. Lol, Joe.

    This is a happy reminder, Nick.

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  5. I always tell them that the gov't pays me to play with R/C airplanes all day.

    ReplyDelete

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