What proportion of those jobs are below minimum wage post-doc positions?
The unemployment rate for panhandlers is also very low, very few of them face redundancy
The unemployment rate for panhandlers is also very low, very few of them face redundancy
Probably not very many. Typical postdoc pay is $40-60k/year depending on where the job is located ($40k in Urbana-Champaigne, $60k NYC or Chicago).
That's about 2-4x lower than what the postdoc could get in the outside world, but it's a far cry from minimum wage.
I say thee "Ha!", sir. The offers I was getting for post-docs were consistently on or below the low end of that range, even in San Francisco (which ain't cheap).
Probably one of the biggest nudges I had away from academia was the realization that as a post-doc, I'd have a lower standard of living than I did as a graduate student. It didn't seem like a smart trend to follow.
I guess applied math is the place to be if you want to stay in academia.