Do you know somebody who after getting a PhD are unemployed?

Question

If so,
What kind of PhD is it?

Answer 1

Sure, quite a few. If an academic area has little real-world application (Art History, Philosophy, Russian Literature. etc.), there are often not sufficient teaching jobs for all the PhD's to be placed.

Still, the first time I saw my teaching assistant from college, who'd told us he'd be getting his PhD the same time we graduated, working at a Circle K, I was taken somewhat aback.

Answer 2

Me! That said, I will not say that my unemployment came about immediately. My first job post-PhD (in a humanities subject) was teaching English to non-native speakers of the language, and I did that for a few years. After leaving my job, I took on extra courses to teach myself a foreign language that I was more or less good in in the hopes of opening up more job opportunities in translation work. I think that academics and people with PhDs trap themselves in ideas that having a PhD means that they need to be professors only when they can transfer the critical thinking and skills they have over to non-academic work. Either way, my unemployment is not necessarily involuntary, but voluntary in the sense that I left my former job for wanting to change career, not because I could not get an academic position (even if it is contracted). People should not be too quick to jump onto the bandwagon of assuming that PhD degrees are useless.

Answer 3

Yep. It can happen after any kind of PhD - philosophy, English, research science. There just aren't as many jobs available for those people as there are qualified people applying. If you always want to be able to find a job, go for law, medicine, or engineering.

Answer 4

I can't think of anyone right now, but certainly I've known such people over time. Most of them were unemployed because they had problematic personalities, or, in the case of a few, they came out on the job market at a time when there were more graduates than jobs, and by the time the market evened out, their resumes looked funny because it was obvious that they hadn't worked for years. I do know of a lot of people, particularly in the humanities, who are underemployed - they are working as adjunct faculty at many different schools because they can't find a tenure-track job at one.

Answer 5

I can't name names, but there are two good reasons for this to happen. First, you become "overqualified" for many jobs. You don't get hired because the employer feels that you will want too high of a pay or that you may become dissatisfied with your job. Second, some academics just don't mix well with other people. Brilliant, yes. Good team members, no.

Answer 6

Did you know that like 60% of people that work at the Gap folding jeans and practicing attitude have college degrees?

That's what worthless degrees like CS, Communications, Marketing and Liberal Arts get you.