I propose more tangible changes that I think need to be made concerning postdocs. With Congress considering such issues, perhaps with some lobbying we can get a few changes in this year. First, the number of postdoc positions are increasing linearly with time, while the number of "staff" research position are either relatively flat, or declining. This needs to change.

Question: How many postdocs are there in the U.S.? My guess is about 75,000. Some references on these numbers would be useful. I know from this reference, "Enhancing the Postdoctoral Experience for Scientists and Engineers" they quote about 55,000 postdocs, but this data is now 10 years old (pre NIH budget doubling), and never included postdocs who obtained their PhDs outside the U.S., now a very large component of the postdoc population (I would estimate around ~25%). See:

http://books.nap.edu/html/postdoctoral_experience/

http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=9831&page=5

Acadamia is not the only employer hiring postdocs: Non-profits, government, industry, research hospitals, etc., all have increasing percantages of postdocs on their staff. Take NIH for example. From what I am told, the Bethesday NIH campus has roughly 3,000 postdocs and 9,000 researchers. Can someone please provide more precise numbers here and the reference the source? So, if my numbers are correct, 30% of the researchers are postdocs at NIH! Why, because they are so inexpensiver relative to a staff government researcher and have little job security, so you can let them go with the end of a grant or contract. Such numbers are not uncommon. I would estimate that at many research labs, 20% to 25% of the PhD-level research staff are now postdocs. Most labs have attrition rates of maybe 2-4% per year of research staff (not postdocs) so labs have anywhere from 5 to 10 the number of postdocs needed to compensate for attrition. To the extent that other employers have similar ratios, I imagine it is less in industry, this makes for the bottleneck for transitions to staff positions. For universities, the situation is obviously much worse. I know of one theory professor in physics who has NINE postdocs!

Universities could hire more "senior scientists", and many do. But as this article points out in the field of particle physics, this is an expensive proposition in a time of perpetually tight budgets:

http://mysite.verizon.net/vze2sk2i/spn/ref07/senscientists.pdf

I believe that Congress needs to audit the number of postdocs, and staff-to-postdoc ratios, in the government labs, and get the numbers down to around 10%. Converting postdocs to staff, will cost money, but it is certainly more tangible and better long-term solution than lobbying for better "mentoring". Faculty to postdoc ratios should also be examined.

A prelude to the next topic is postdoc stipends/salaries/benefits, they are far too low, and are one of the main reasons postdoc numbers are increasing with time. You can hire about 3 postdocs for every staff researcher, when you include overhead, FICA, and 401K benefits. This needs to change. Again, Congress has asked the NAS to keep track of this for biomedical researchers, but even the NAS committees think supply of PhDs in the biomedical field is in balance with demand.

See: http://grants.nih.gov/training/nas_report/index.htm

Bob