Article argues that % that land academic jobs is artificially decreased because maybe 50% prefer commercial positions. The main salvo is this: "According to a

Article argues that % that land academic jobs is artificially decreased because maybe 50% prefer commercial positions. The main salvo is this: "According to a 2008 survey by the NSF (a summary is available here), there were about 662,600 work-ready science Ph.D.s in the United States, and only 11,400 of those people were unemployed. That’s an unemployment rate of 1.7 percent." A proper study of the question would take equally smart and motivated people and see what their salary and unemployment rate would be after the same time period if they skipped the PhD. Who cares what the unemployment rate is if you are ignoring whether the job is related to the training and the skill level of your test population?