Chemistry wages in the Netherlands

04 December 2012 - Employment

The Royal Netherlands Chemical Society has published a survey on wages earned in chemistry in the Netherlands. The wages are median and annual before taxes. Remember a Dutch Big Mac costs you 3.50 Euro, the average house costs 228K and the average tax rate is 40%.
Top of the list are full professors (103K), then R&D managers (85K), production managers (77K), senior scientists (75K), sales managers (70K), associate professors (65K),senior R&D engineers (65K), teachers (59K), scientists (54K), process engineers (51K), associate scientists (48K), research analysts (42K) and then PhD students (36K).
The data are hopelessly under reported. The society has over 8500 members but the survey was based on just 1000 members. The total number of employees in the Dutch chemical industry alone is estimated at 63,000.
It is impossible to verify these wages. The number of chemistry related jobs advertised on the various job sites is tiny (< 10) and wages are not published. If there is any active recruitment in chemistry jobs, it takes place hidden from public view.

The PhD student figure seems high. There is a thing called the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities so now the wages are public and known to the decimal: they start at 25K and end at 31K after 4 years. But not 36K. Teachers also seem to earn a lot of money. The data suggest that everyone from scientists to process engineers should quit what they are doing now (goodbye high-tech industry) and make the switch.