Ten years after the Great Recession, chemists reflect on its impact

Abstract

A decade has passed since the Great Recession hit, but many chemists remember the day they were laid off as if it were yesterday. The volatile period from December 2007 to June 2009 was the largest economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and it took away any inkling of job security those in the chemistry community might have felt. Even though time has healed most professional wounds, careers and salaries have yet to fully recover, some chemists say. Many say the lack of jobs in chemistry led them to seek employment in other fields. Some go so far as to describe their cohort of affected chemists as a “lost generation.” “There are a lot of people who are really good scientists who are no longer in the field, and that’s a huge loss,” says Ph.D. chemist Brenda Case, who was laid off from Pfizer in 2010 and