The US and Canada tend to "squeeze" non-tenure-track people out a few years after they receive their PhD. A huge number of postdoc fellowships[0] cut off at 12

The US and Canada tend to "squeeze" non-tenure-track people out a few years after they receive their PhD. A huge number of postdoc fellowships[0] cut off at 12 months (NIH DP-1, various NSF postdocs) to 4-5 years (NIH K99, Simons Foundation BTI, Burroughs Wellcome Career/CASI Awards). You can, of course, hang on for longer by being paid from research grants. However, even that is tricky because the size of a "standard" modular NIH grant hasn't gone up in ages and even a modest salary ($60k + benefits) will now eat up a substantial chunk of it, so you'll spend a lot of time looking for money. Frustratingly, you often can't be the PI on grants either, so it devolves into ghost-writing. It also makes it hard to settle down if you are piecing together a string of 1-2 year contracts. This is, IMO, stupid. It's not good for doing science and a few studies have shown that not good for training scientists either. A system that funded a few more staff scientists would likely produce more and better research and training. [0] It's even worse, as many awards for tenure-track profs are ALSO gated on time-since-degree.