People I know in academia are also having a terrible time. Grant funding is in the toilet. The focus is on providing for current staff not hiring. No one is leaving because no one has anywhere to go.
My guess is I'll end up in government or an NGO but I'm probably going to do a PhD before that so getting a real job is at least 5 years away. The previous grad students for my advisor are all employed with decent jobs so I'm not worried, especially since I have a pretty unique skill set for the field and strong stats fundamentals.
Edit: engineers are always skeptical of my career change but my friends actually in the life sciences are more confident I'll be able to figure it out.
The previous grad students came out in a different economic context. Things have changed remarkably for the sciences in just this year alone. Grad schools have actually rescinded offers because they no longer have funding for first years and faculty don’t have funding for taking on students. No one has seen anything like this before.
Seems to be kind of a running theme of the last few years, isn't it? I know some of these major upsets and changes to the way things are done have always been there in some ways, but it feels like there were never quite as many alarm bells ringing of unrelated existing systems catastrophically failing.
Everyone in my age group (early-mid 20s) is sure having a fun time right now.
I'm flexible and I'll have a wide variety of marketable skills so I'm sure I'll figure something out eventually.
I think I come across as a lot less anxious than people expect because I've just accepted these challenges as a cost I'm going to have to pay. Trying to change careers so far has already really sucked in many ways (though in more ways it's been a real joy) but I actually handle this sort of stress okay. Turns out what I handle much worse is not really believing in my job.
