stormguy80

couldn't agree more. Bottom line is demand is low relative to supply and the market is sending a strong message in that the salaries are bad. "Mr. Market" is essentially saying to mets, "You guys are smart and we need people like you to be engineers, computer scientists, etc..I'm going to punish you with a low salary if you choose to go where you are not needed instead of where you are as a way to try to get more people to go where we really need them" The problem is, mets are not listening!

To be honest, I"m not in that bad of place right now but a lot of other people I know are. I told the story as close to honest truth as I could and the reality is it is in fact that bad. You can look up the stats (285 jobs per 600 - 1000 grads) for yourself if you doubt me.

I never said that the NWS couldn't be stressful. I simply said that the private sector is likely more stressful. Also, regarding what you do with the GFE I know you guys work hard to add a value and that the models are rarely perfect. But I do know that the Weather Channel uses a similar system and only has one person on a desk forecasting the whole country. But please don't think I was trying to downplay the work you guys do. I know that to do the job properly you need more than one desk but I'm just not sure certain factions in the US who want to downsize government would see it that way.

well congradulations but not everyone is going to be in the top few percent who manage to get good jobs.

Yes, when I was in school almost 10 years ago this is what I was told. I was told this by profs and the older students near graduation who were so happy they had finished the hard part of dynamic, etc.. They told us there were lots of new opportunities presenting themselves in the private sector despite the federal hiring slack.

What really gets to me is that in almost every other field that’s as bad as meteorology in these ways the truth about it is well known and accepted. For example, I have a close relative who pursued a career as a trombone player and he was well warned about what he was getting into and how bad it can be finding a job and making good pay as a musician. But in meteorology the difference in what the perception is (lots of great jobs and opportunities) vs. the reality (few jobs) is greater than in almost any other field. People are always hyping up the “growth in the private sector” and all the new opportunities that will present themselves due to concern about climate change and severe weather / hurricanes. This continues to draw more unsuspecting people into the field and then the problem gets even worse. The truth needs to be told and then people can decide for themselves. That’s all I’m saying.

Well, what a nice welcome! What you say is obviously true to a point but my point is that in meteorology this is true tenfold over most other jobs. Have you ever heard the term meteorology "sweatshop"? Well, I got news for you, I worked for one of them and its as bad as people say. I know many others who went through the same experience. Like I said, not ALL places are like that but the majority of private sector places are. How about you actually try to process what I meant next time before immediately bashing me?

Please read this if you're thinking of meteorology for a career..I know its long but it may save you years of frustration! The number of people who are majoring in meteorology has skyrocketed in recent years and is still increasing. As a result, the number of recent grads seeking employment greatly outnumbers the number of job openings and it gets worse each year. This issue was discussed in the AMS magazine June 2008 issue and at various conferences. I can tell you from first hand experience the problem is real. According to estimates, the number of new meteorology grads each year as of 2008 was somewhere between 600 and 1000. This number is very large considering that there is only 6 or 7 thousand working in the field. Estimates also put the number of entry level job openings each year at around 285 meaning that less than half of new grads will be able to find work. The oversupply of qualified meteorologists has drastic consequences that go far beyond the difficulty of simply finding a job. If you are lucky enough to break into the field you will have to go wherever the job takes you since few are fortunate enough to get enough offers allowing them to be choosy. The 2nd major thing is salary and work environment. The oversupply has driven salary levels down to obscenely low levels. Since NWS jobs are incredibly competitive to get (only about 40 openings a year and hundreds of job seekers) most are forced to obtain employment in the private sector where starting salaries are in the 21-25 k range. I can tell from experience that in the early 2000s, $20,000 / year was a common number. What’s more, raises are often very small and if you do manage to last long enough to climb close to 30 k, you will have a high risk of being laid off unless you have well above average forecasting skills as companies prefer the cheap labour they can get from eager and willing new grads. Since the private companies have so much leverage over employees due to the oversupply, the workload and the work environment is extremely demanding. Why? They can get away with it because if you quit you are easily replaceable! You will be working your tail off - essentially chained to a desk for the duration of your shift dealing with a heavy client load who will call non-stop during times of active weather leaving you little time to properly analyze and forecast the weather. Also, working more than 40 hrs per week with no overtime is common and some places even have 45-50 hour weeks built into the schedule for certain parts of the year. Employees must also deal with awkward shift schedules which may include hours like 2 - 11 am or even split shifts. Why? It’s all about suiting the needs of the company and clients and if employees don’t like it they are replaceable. I wish I could say that the above experience I described in private sector meteorology is the exception but the reality is that it’s the norm. There are some exceptions but only the very top qualified people will get these better jobs in the private sector. As for the NWS, you can pretty much write it off as a job option unless you have an advanced degree and did a student internship with them and even then it will still be really tough to get in. Bottom line, only a few percent of today’s grads will manage to break into the NWS. As for well paying TV jobs, they are equally if not even more competitive. Again, most start in small markets where the pay is 15-25 thousand/year and only a small number make it to big time. So the big question…Why does meteorology get listed among the top 50 careers? The answer is ignorance of the writers of these articles and also that the stats are easy to “spin”. Here’s how: Take the issue of salary…Average and even median salaries are pretty good (60-80 k) but the reality is these numbers are skewed up by high paying 80k + jobs in government that only a small percent of today’s grads will be able to get as discussed. So most new or recent grads will be stuck in the low paying private sector. Then there’s job growth. While it may be true that the field is growing somewhat faster than average, the number of new grads is exploding!.. as also discussed. This needs to be factored into the equation and when it is, the outlook is far starker. And again all the growth is in the private sector - I know, enough said about that. Finally, according to the “experts” who write these articles the stress level is “not too bad”. This may be true some of the time if you are in the NWS where the domain sizes are small but it is far from the truth in the private sector where you’ll be dealing with a very demanding workload spanning clients across the whole globe. A final note, as bad as things are now, the future will be worse. That is almost a guarantee. Forecasting is becoming increasingly automated. Using graphical forecasting software, you can literally have just one desk at one building for forecasting the whole country, or at least a large portion of it. The grids in these graphical forecasts can be populated with model data that on many days doesn’t require much modification. The data then goes downstream and is formatted into icons and words via an automated process. So yes, the secret is out!..the icon or sentence forecasts you see today are not “hand crafted” in the format you are viewing. They are mass produced graphically and then converted. What does all this mean? It means increasingly few people are needed to do the job of forecasting. Think about it….ONE desk currently forecasts for a whole country at certain companies while the NWS has 122 offices, each with about 20 people, for forecasting across the US. This status quo in the NWS is almost guaranteed not to last too much longer and it’s already extremely competitive! It could literally get a hundred or more times worse. Finally though, if you really, really, really, really love meteorology and absolutely can’t see yourself ever doing anything else and you are still not deterred after all this then go for it. However, I suspect a large number of current met majors would change their majors if they knew the truth about how bad it was which I’m trying to tell you.