NEWS OF THE WEEK
EMPLOYMENT OUTLOOK Chemistry grads face tight job market A survey of employment plans re/ % leased last week predicts an upJ L J L surge in hiring by companies in the third quarter of this year. But the study, the most optimistic hiring outlook in the past five years, does not mean an easier time for the thousands of graduates with bachelor's and master's degrees in chemistry who are flooding the job market. According to the "Manpower Employment Outlook Survey/' conducted by Milwaukee-based Manpower Inc., 29% of employers studied said they intend to hire additional permanent employees and just 7% plan staff reductions—the brightest outlook since third-quarter 1989 when 30% expected increases and 6% anticipated work force declines. The quarterly survey is a statistical sample of more than 15,000 large public and private employers in 10 industrial sectors, including chemicals and allied products, in 452 cities. "The results indicate a clear continuation of increasing employment trends established earlier this year, confirming a full return to prerecession job conditions," the report states, concluding that "job finding should be easier this summer." But chemistry department chairmen contacted by C&EN discount this bullish outlook. And other people familiar with recruitment of new graduates, especially at the bachelor's and master's degree levels, are skeptical that chemistry, chemical engineering, or other technical disciplines will be the immediate beneficiaries of an upturn in the economy. "Hiring might be better next year," says Robert Weatherall, director of the Career Services Office at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "But for now, I would say that companies made their plans last fall and for the most part they stayed with them." Those plans call for fewer hires, and throughout the fall and winter campuses reported drastically reduced recruiting for chemistry graduates. A springtime survey by the College Place4
JUNE 6,1994 C&EN
ment Council (CPC), Bethlehem, Pa., which keeps tabs on recruiting and starting salaries, found that recruiters were beginning to return to campuses late in the spring. But CPC confirms that most jobs went to graduates in areas such as accounting, banking, insurance, retailing, and consulting. Members of the Commission on Professionals in Science & Technology, which met last month in Washington, D.C., maintain that the job market for chemists and chemical engineers is still extraordinarily tight. This view is supported by Department of Labor statistics, which show total employment in the chemicals and allied products fields remaining stagnant in April at 1,050,000, down more than 20,000 from April 1993. "If we agreed on anything," says Eleanor Babco, the commission's associate director, "it's that the [job] market has probably bottomed out," although the job market in physics and math "looks progressively worse." "Some companies [that hire chemists] are beginning to resume hiring," but they are not the large chemical companies that have gone through downsizings and spin-offs, says James D. Burke, manager of research recruitment and university relations for Rohm and Haas. Burke, who keeps his finger on the pulse of recruiting nationally, says most hiring is by smaller biotechnology, pharmaceutical, analytical and environmental services, materials, and consulting firms. The job outlook for new Ph.D.s remains tight (C&EN, Oct. 25,1993, page 42). Eric Greenberg, director of surveys and research of the American Management Association, New York City, contends that companies face a dilemma. "When you've been through several rounds of downsizing, and you've restructured [the company] to where you want it, it's a very difficult decision to add permanent payroll employees without earnest evidence that the economy is not only expanding now but will contin-
ue to expand for the foreseeable future. Many businesses are not yet convinced that this recovery is real." This sentiment jibes with the views of Dennis C. Liotta of Emory University's chemistry department and other department chairmen around the country. Despite increased earnings and sales in the first quarter for chemical firms, "companies are still trying to be lean and mean for the nineties," he says. Still, some companies are hiring. Tim Collins, manager of B.S./M.S. recruiting for R&D at Procter & Gamble, says, "Our business in consumer products remains strong, and we're investing in the growth of our pharmaceutical business. We've therefore seen no decrease in recruiting this year for chemists, and only a moderate decrease for chemical engineers, at the B.S. and M.S. levels." Madeleine Jacobs
Scientists challenge paper linking ozone, UV Scientists at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, are charging that a paper published in Sciencelast fall linking large increases in ultraviolet-B radiation intensity to stratospheric ozone depletion is flawed and draws unfounded conclusions. But the authors of the criticized study stand by their work. The controversy centers on a paper titled "Evidence for Large Upward Trends of Ultraviolet-B Radiation Linked to Ozone Depletion" by James B. Kerr, head of ozone research and monitoring with Environment Canada, and his coworker C. Thomas McElroy [Science, 262, 1032 (1993)]. Their research is one of the few studies correlating UV intensity increases with ozone changes anywhere beyond Antarctica, where the massive ozone depletion in the recurring ozone hole causes unmistakably large increases in the amount of UV light reaching Earth. However, professors Patrick J. Michaels
