Never mind getting a tenure-track job in academia. While a PhD-holder finding a good job is rare enough, it turns out that the salary prospects for academics is declining too.
From the Boston Globe comes news that:
Perhaps people should flee the Ph.D. path…. While the inflation-adjusted earnings of workers with bachelor’s or masters degrees have increased very slightly since 1999–a rise of one percent or less–the story was quite different for the doctorate. Employees with Ph.D.’s can expect to earn 10 percent less, in real dollars, than they would have a decade ago.
That being said, it looks like real wages for people of all education levels hasn’t increased much in the last decade. I fear to look at what’s has happened to the salaries of journalists in the same period. Academia never was a particularly high-wage occupation.
