Ironically when I was a postdoc in Australia, where you get paid on the same (good) payscale as other academics (you could even be promoted to professor level o

Ironically when I was a postdoc in Australia, where you get paid on the same (good) payscale as other academics (you could even be promoted to professor level on a non permanent "postdoc" position), industry managers (from collaborators) always complained about the high salaries, which made it less attractive for people to move to industry. Since I moved to Sweden I see much more issues trying to recruit postdocs. We still get reasonable number of applicants, but they are very low quality. We have been hiring PhD instead, who are much better generally (most of the postdoc applicants for positions where we looked for both, wouldn't have made the cut amongst the PhDs). I blame that on several factors, 1. We are in a research area where our PhDs can go to industry earning 6 figures (at least in the US) so many opportunities for them if they look around 2. An increasing percentage of funding comes from competitive grants, so there are lots of postdoc positions. So even if applicants want to stay in academia if they are good they can be very picky. 3. A more general frustration with funding processes and universities continuously increasing academic workload, which academics are more open about. So PhDs see the downsides of sticking around more clearly. I should say that I agree with the article that all this is good because it might be the only way things will change