Never a dull moment

Abstract

September is here, and so is C&EN’s annual review of the employment market for chemical scientists. You can turn to page 26 to read stories of job seekers and employers in the academic sector in the US and Canada during the 2020–21 hiring season. If you are wondering whether the academic job market will bounce back after the pandemic, we unfortunately don’t have a satisfying or categorical answer. Tenure-track jobs are always highly coveted, and during the pandemic they have been more difficult to find. And hiring processes have been longer than usual, according to the people C&EN reporter Bethany Halford spoke to. By contrast, the pharma job market is superhot right now with, for example, an academic group leader reporting on Twitter that postdoctoral fellows are being snatched up after less than a year into their medicinal chemistry labs. Many of us remember when Big Pharma was downsizing not