HP Job Market

["Michael P. Grissom" <mikeg@SLAC.Stanford.EDU>]

Radsafers,

Just a few comments relating to this thread that Melissa
threw out.

I recently was the "interviewee" for a career planning
class at a local community college.  The questions asked
were of a general nature designed to provide information 
regarding the career and related career fields.  I noted 
that the following were examples of allied career paths 
in the radiation protection community:

    Health Physicist, Industrial/University
    Health Physicist, Medical Community
    Health Physicist, Military Community
    Medical Physicist
    Scientist in Nuclear Medicine (includes Radiopharmacy)
    Radiation Physicist
    Radiation Biologist
    Radiation Chemist (includes Nuclear Chemist, etc.)
    Nuclear Engineer
    Biophysicist
    Biomedical Engineer

I also was "up front" on the employment outlook for these
career paths.  That is, it is the flatest job market across
ALL of these fields perhaps ever seen (most of these career
options have only been available in significant numbers since
the Manhatten Project days in the early 1940s).

However, I would recommend before anyone grab a ticket to jump 
off the Golden Gate Bridge that they look at the history of
other professions and note that every field has down-turning
episodes.  I suspect that all of these fields (since all have
missions remaining-->funding by governmental agencies and
industry has been depressed that is needed to deal with the 
work that is there to be done, and the medical community is 
in the middle of determining what and how will be done under 
the new funding/reimbursement regimes still being considered)
will show periods of improved opportunities in the next 5-20
years.

This may be of little solace to current graduates, but as
Kim Kearfott has reminded me, you may have to work harder at
it, but jobs still can be found!  Of course, that may mean 
working at a different job than "HP" per se for some period
of time to keep bacon on the table.  Also, this is not just
a problem for new graduates, the older folks, including CHPs
specializing in the consulting environment, are having more 
difficulty locating work yielding the resource inflow that 
was seen even just 5 years ago.

There is always hope for the future.  By the way, I do not
agree with an earlier posting in the physics community (re-
garding the lack of opportunity for particle physicists) that
one should complete the Ph.D. just for the sake of science and
not worry about getting a job.  That is very esoteric (and
Ivory Towerish) but doesn't match well with reality!

It may be time to reflect on how many and what kind of
graduate training programs we need to maintain for the rest of 
this decade.  Scientists, in general, are not doing well right
now, but does anyone really doubt the need to have 'em?

Good Luck,

MikeG.
-----------------------
Michael P. Grissom
mikeg@slac.stanford.edu
Phone:  (415) 926-2346
Fax:    (415) 926-3030