I would guess your estimate for 50% of phds working as scientists in academia or industry is skewed by the recently slackened job market. Physicists are great utility players, so when a field has a shortage they tend to fill in the slack. As the job market continues to stay pretty awful, there are fewer shortages. In my cohort, less than 10% are still in any kind of scientific field (but we largely came out of our second postdocs right into the great recession, so we got hit especially hard).
I would add that when someone describes the “flexibility” of a physics major, they are putting spin on a negative. Every physics major working as a programmer or on an IT help desk is a physics major not working in science- philosophy looks similarly flexible.
My advice to physics majors is consistently this- those physics majors that get hired by finance companies? Odds are, they actually took some finance classes or picked up enough of a financial background to interview with them. Those physics majors hired by engineering companies? They probably took some engineering classes where they learned at least some design skills. Those physics majors working for insurance companies? They took actuarial tests. Software engineers took programming classes, etc.
If you put your head down and excel at the physics major and physics research, but do not take any outside-the-major classes, you will have an incredibly difficult time finding a job without some additional work. No one will hire you BECAUSE you are a physics major, instead they will hire you because you know something useful and, as a bonus, you were a physics major.
EDIT: Also, be very careful with the APS numbers, especially for phds. The survey response rate is abysmal, and a large portion of the responses they do get are sent in by advisers rather than students.
I would guess your estimate for 50% of phds working as scientists in academia or industry is skewed by the recently slackened job market. Physicists are great utility players, so when a field has a shortage they tend to fill in the slack. As the job market continues to stay pretty awful, there are fewer shortages. In my cohort, less than 10% are still in any kind of scientific field (but we largely came out of our second postdocs right into the great recession, so we got hit especially hard).
I would add that when someone describes the “flexibility” of a physics major, they are putting spin on a negative. Every physics major working as a programmer or on an IT help desk is a physics major not working in science- philosophy looks similarly flexible.
My advice to physics majors is consistently this- those physics majors that get hired by finance companies? Odds are, they actually took some finance classes or picked up enough of a financial background to interview with them. Those physics majors hired by engineering companies? They probably took some engineering classes where they learned at least some design skills. Those physics majors working for insurance companies? They took actuarial tests. Software engineers took programming classes, etc.
If you put your head down and excel at the physics major and physics research, but do not take any outside-the-major classes, you will have an incredibly difficult time finding a job without some additional work. No one will hire you BECAUSE you are a physics major, instead they will hire you because you know something useful and, as a bonus, you were a physics major.
EDIT: Also, be very careful with the APS numbers, especially for phds. The survey response rate is abysmal, and a large portion of the responses they do get are sent in by advisers rather than students.
Thanks for the helpful information.