Hi Dave--

Yes, it is a little surprising at first glance, and it's good news, but I don't think it's that good. Here's why:

If you take a look at Paula's slides, you'll see that the number of people in question is pretty small: only about 10% of the cohort makes it into tenure-track jobs before age 35.

Part of this group is a set of obviously brilliant researchers, and I think universities do a decent job of finding these folks. However, I'd guess that there really aren't that many such people and that the bulk of that 10% is people who go straight to lower-tier, teaching-intensive places that don't require that one do a postdoc.

The data are from 2003. There is about a 2 year lag for Survey of Doctorate Recipients releases, and they just switched from a 2-year cycle to a 3-year cycle, so the next data set for 2006 probably won't be out until next year some time.

That being said, the bulge in PhDs will almost certainly not be absorbed nicely -- here's why:

1. The research space built during the expansion just came online and the space has been staffed. It is unlikely that there will be much new hiring because
2. The NIH's expansion is over, and their budget is now flat in nominal dollars and declining in real dollars.
3. The bulge in PhDs is in the future. An expansion of life sciences PhD programs began in 1998-1999 and continued at least until 2005. Those people will just now be graduating into a pretty bad market. See http://blog.phds.org/2006/12/13/watching-a-train-wreck-part-1

Geoff