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"In the current environment, any increase is welcome." --Dave Moore, AAMC

“Reduced economic opportunities in some fields relative to others … may be an important factor driving native students to enter particular occupations and avoid others.” --George Borjas

Working with a professor and lab mates from back home make for an easier, more congenial experience than plunging into a strictly American cultural environment.

Although efforts to provide real career opportunities for more scientists would create stronger incentives for Americans to seek science careers, the political momentum appears to be on the side of granting more H-1B visas.

"To me, having a Ph.D. and being a professor is a lifelong learning experience. The degree, to me, is to teach you how to teach yourself later on." --Adil Shamoo

“The glut of graduate students enticed by the growing support a few years ago have since found it difficult to get their own work funded … and the sudden deceleration in funding has left many researchers feeling slighted even though their funding grew by leaps and bounds in the past decade.” --Yuval Levin

"The best and the brightest seem not to be going into science as much as they did in the past." And those who do opt for research careers "seem to be dropping out at a very high rate." --Mark Donowitz

GREAT is now transforming its committee on postdocs into a body that will have its own independent, university-appointed membership, elected leadership, and meetings.

"Substantially more scientists and engineers graduate from U.S. universities than can find attractive career openings in the U.S. workforce, [and] the postdoc population, which has grown very rapidly in U.S. universities and is recruited increasingly from abroad, looks more like a pool of low-cost research lab workers with limited career prospects than a high-quality training program for soon-to-be academic researchers." --Michael Teitelbaum

In hard economic times, the controversial H-1B visa program, which lowers wages for Americans while exposing foreign scientists to the whims of employers, needs major reform.

How the stimulus affects the scientific labor market depends on what comes after it.

As science-funding agencies begin to dispense the huge stimulus appropriation, opinions about its ultimate impact on early-career scientists are mixed.

As NSF prepares to help Professional Science Master's programs multiply, employment prospects for graduates of these programs look strong, even in a weak economy.

Two new initiatives seek to prepare postdocs for off-campus careers.

Rutgers postdocs join their bosses' union as union efforts multiply across the continent.

Traditional PI-centered research can't solve today's big technological problems, a lab leader asserts.

Concern for lab safety advances -- slowly -- while University of California postdoc contract negotiations stall.

His life in tatters, one former UMass postdoc sues his college and his adviser as postdocs on three UMass campuses unionize.

Research finds that scientists' career-related preferences are far wider than stereotypes suggest -- and that industry is likely to be an excellent choice for many.

Scientists' strong propensity to pair up romantically, research shows, can either help or hurt their careers.