I was a Life Sciences PhD student for 6 years and started a postdoc, but then jumped ship and became a software developer for a non-science company. My salary is more than 2x as high as what I was making as a postdoc, and 3x greater than what I had been living on as a grad student. The salary thing is huge. From my point of view, research science was becoming a luxury/hobby profession of people whose spouses make a lot of money or who are independently wealthy.

The only two solutions I see are either funding for NIH and basic sciences drastically increases (my preferred solution), or there is some breakthrough which makes biotech and life sciences industry more profitable and able to hire all the entry level PhDs.

Notice how the engineering and physics PhDs make up only a small fraction of the donut chart? That's because those folks graduate with skills that are desirable to industry because they can translate into profit. The biotech industry does not need smart and inexperienced idea people. The biotech industry prefers very senior level scientists with proven track records of profitability, and worker drones who have bachelors or masters degrees who are not on the scientist track.