Guest Editorial: The Professional Status of European Chemists and Chemical Engineers

Abstract

Which country pays its chemists and chemical engineers the highest salaries?W here can If ind an ew job quickest?W hich chemical sub-discipline offers most jobs? Reliable answers for these and other questions have been derived from the first European employment survey for chemists and chemical engineers, which was carriedo ut in 2013. Here we publish the first general evaluation of the results of this survey.The development of the questionnaire and the data collection was commissioned by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission ande xecuted by the European Chemistry Thematic Network Association (ECTN). It was strongly supported by the European Association for Chemical and Molecular Sciences (EuCheMS), the European Chemical Industry Council (Cefic), and the European Chemistry andC hemical Engineering EducationN etwork (EC2E2N2). Participating National Societies (members ocieties of EuCheMS) cover more than 90 %o f the EuCheMS membership. Each participating society nominated aN ational Delegate, who was responsible for supporting the survey within each participating National Society.The American Chemical Society( ACS) regularly publishes an employment survey in Chemical &E ngineering News (see Ref.[1] for the most recent report). Data werec ollected from ACS members workingw ithin the USA.T he ACS survey focuses on salary ande mployment. The survey resultsc learly show in which sub-discipline the graduates received their highest qualification and in which sub-discipline they are workinga fter startingt heir professional careers. It would be of utmost interest for decisions within Europe to have access to similard ata.The ACS survey and the European Employment Survey have similar objectives. Several other surveys or reports have been published that focus on educational issues. Examples are surveys by the AustrianChemical Society [2] or by the Royal Society of Chemistry. [3] The importance of physics to the economies of Europew as investigated by the European Physical Society. [4] The International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) publishes its Optics &P hotonics Global Salary Reports with major contributions from North America, Europe, and Asia (see Ref.[5] for the most recent report). Survey:Participation, Questionnaire, EvaluationAt otal of 4440c hemists and chemical engineers responded to the first issue of the European Employment Survey.T hisr eport does not differentiate between chemists and chemical engineers, and their responses have been evaluated jointly.F or convenience, in this Editorial this joint group of chemists and chemicalengineers will simply be referred to as "chemists".Ar igid procedure was developed and applied to purge the responses of irregular answers. 3830 responses remained after this process and these were evaluated further.P articular emphasis was placed on the employment situation of chemists who graduated within the last 15 years, and 2445 responses came from chemists fitting this criterion. All responses were stored in anonymous form.The questionn...

Employment and Careers of European Chemists (ESEC2)

“…It was already mentioned that for ESEC1 “results of a cross evaluation might be dominated by the large share of respondents from Italy and the UK. … This called for an evaluation of individual countries together with the joint evaluation of all European responses” . This country‐specific evaluation clearly revealed differences in traditions and/or conditions between various European countries.…”

“…The graph in Figure consists of a series of decaying peaks. This shape is more or less identical to the corresponding Figure in the ESEC1 report, regardless of the different parameters on the ordinate (ESEC2: number of months, ESEC1: attended events) and the few differences in the list of the most responding countries between ESEC1 and ESEC2. This confirms the previous observation that the majority of chemists after graduation refrains from any participation in continuing education, regardless of the working country (Figure ) or the graduation level (Figure ).…”

“…The wide span in annual salary within the EU was already discussed in the ESEC1 report . For this reason, we focus here on the median salaries for the 11 most responding countries and did not calculate any EU average value.…”

“…ESEC2 is based on the experience of the first European employment survey (ESEC1) for chemists and chemical engineers, which was carried out in 2013. The report on ESEC1 is freely accessible . Both the questionnaire and the technology have been much reworked.…”

“…The report on ESEC1 is freely accessible. [1] Both the questionnairea nd the technology have been much reworked. The questionnaireo fE SEC1 was offered in 24 European languages.…”