Way back when I was a young kid going into a science career, I knew ahead of time that the pay was going to be crap and I was going to have to scramble for a new position every few years, and that I was going to have to move multiple times to destinations unknown. That was the job. My expectations were low (maybe too low — who’s stupid enough to pursue a career like that?) but I just wanted to do science and teach and have a satisfying intellectual life. We made enough money to scrape by, and there was enough of a demand that I felt I could probably land a new position at a university somewhere if one job fell through. I came from a generation where science was a viable, if not particularly lucrative, career.
For one postdoc, uncertainty about whether the funding for her awarded “diversity” fellowship from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will come through means she’s spending valuable time writing more applications instead of doing research. For another, learning that the “dream job” he’d been offered at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) was being withdrawn because of the federal hiring freeze has left him clinging to his current position—and $5000 poorer because he already canceled his lease in preparation for moving. And a Ph.D. student whose dream is to one day lead a planetary mission at NASA is “panicking” about her professional future.
These are just a few of the countless researchers reeling after President Donald Trump’s administration unleashed a wave of actions over the past month—freezing funds, firing thousands of federal employees, upending programs and research related to gender and diversity, and more. Scientists of all stripes have been affected, but none more so than early-career researchers, a group already struggling with low pay and job insecurity. Now, some wonder how many of those budding researchers will throw in the towel and leave science, or the United States, entirely. “There’s going to be a missing age class of researchers that will reverberate for years,” one federal scientist fears.
Chopping out a whole cohort of researchers is a catastrophe. What happens in 10 years, 20 years, the time when all these young people should be in their prime, producing great new ideas and data? There was a time 30 years ago when I was tempted by opportunities to work in industry, and I said no, and committed to academic research. I’d be deeply conflicted if I faced that kind of situation now. Or not…maybe those academic avenues would be simply closed.
Young researchers also face the prospect that positions for graduate students and postdocs will dwindle because of broader scale cuts to research funding—for instance, the threatened reduction in the indirect costs that universities charge to carry out research funded through federal grants. As graduate school admission decisions are being made, faculty at several research-intensive universities—including Vanderbilt University and the University of Washington—have been told to reduce the size of their incoming cohorts, the health news site STAT reported.
Or wait…what if you decided to leave the academic track and pursue a career in industry, just like all your peers?
Many of the federal scientists fired this month are also early in their careers. “I feel like I was robbed of a career,” says one biologist who was terminated from his position at the U.S. Geological Survey on 14 February. Another fired scientist, who had started a position at USDA in 2023 after finishing a 3-year postdoc, says he had “envisioned this being my last job—one I would be in for 20 or more years.”
They’re now suddenly in an uncertain position, with a new set of financial challenges and anxiety about where they’ll be able to find work next. “I’m not optimistic about an already competitive job market that is going to be flooded with qualified scientists,” one said.
I never thought my career timing was particularly good — I was always being informed that there was going to be a wave of opportunities as older faculty retired, but that it was going to be ten years in the future. It was always 10 years from now, kind of like Elon Musk’s predictions about when we’d be living on Mars. Those predictions always failed anyway, just like the fantasy of Mars colonies. But now I think maybe I got lucky. I’m reaching the end of my career just as American science is being taken out back behind the chemical sheds by a gang of psychopathic fascists.
That doesn’t help my daughter, who has just begun a career in science.
The sudden job cuts have been devastating to all the Federal employees fired without warning.
A lot of these are (or were) career positions too.
You have a house with a mortgage, car payments, two small children, and suddenly, no income.
I’ve read a few stories and they are all the same. People in a state of shock scrambling for an alternative.
Job security and jobs with good benefits have gotten scarcer and scarcer in the USA.
IMO, that is one main reason why a lot of people hate the modern USA and voted for Trump.
One of the few safe havens left were…government jobs. Jobs at the Federal, state, and local levels. Pay OK, job security OK, good benefits, worthwhile work serving the citizens.
At the Federal level, thanks to Trump/Musk that safe haven is gone.
Life in the USA just got noticeably worse.
This is a good place to explain how Trump/Musk are destroying our society and its future.
As a lot of economists like Robert Reich have pointed out, unregulated capitalism has a built in drop dead feature.
When the oligarchies have all the money, the 99% of the people don’t have any money to buy anything except survival if they are lucky.
And then the whole system just stops growing and creeps along.
This in fact, isn’t theory. It happens.
Indonesia has a shrinking middle class for various reasons.
And, it is effecting their ability to grow their economy from a middle income developing country.
That is what the USA is on track to become.
As the 1% oligarchies take more and more of our GDP, the US middle class is shrinking.
When they have most of the money and power, the US economic system will slow way down.
The 1% knows this.
They just don’t care.
After your first few billions of dollars, the money is just a marker in a game.
I never had a chance. I wish I could go back to my undergrad self and make a different choice.
So much has gotten much worse, so quickly, after only a month. My guess is that things will be considerably worse still after the 24th month, and even more so after the 48th month. I just hope that the Democratic candidates can capitalize on that, when the time comes.
Not just anti-science, but anti-intellectualism in general. Richard Hofstadter wrote Anti-intellectualism in America in the early 1960s. What he described then remains true. He also penned The Paranoid Style in American Politics which is also still relevant. The difference between then and now is that the paranoid clowns are no longer shunned by the wider society, and are now in charge.
The MAGA virus has also spread to Australia with the current opposition leader and man who would be king channelling Trump’s talking points. His party has overseen the decline of Australian industry and science. When I started my degree in palaeontology there were at least 5 universities teaching it with active research programs in my state. My university had 4 professors and over 35 research students. Today there is only one university in the state teaching it in any substantial form and my university is down to one professor who is winding up ready for retirement with no replacement in sight.
What good is palaeontology you may ask. Whats useful about studying long dead things? Well with the deliberate death of manufacturing Australia is basically a giant quarry dependent on the mining industry. To find new resources requires geology, including high precision stratigraphic mapping. That requires determining the ages of often virtually identical rock units. That needs a palaeontologist to examine the fossils. Commercial applications aside, fossils, particularly dinosaurs fascinate the general public and have generated substantial businesses serving that fascination.
It is painful to read this. I used to joke about “move to Canada/Europe” but now it is a real thing if you are concerned about the future of your kids. It is certainly a real thing if you want to have a career in science.
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There will always be a place for you in Sweden – the coalition that is dependent on support from the Xenophobe party is on track to losing big in a year.
(Also, Michael Marshall in God Awful Movies is British, so he will be safe from whatever horrors Trump has in store)
That’s good news. I just hope Sweden doesn’t have a Starmer ready to sell out to the rich and let the far right set the agenda.