Most former postdocs from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), continue to work in the scientific research enterprise, according to an analysis published earlier this month (E. A. Silva et al. PLoS Biol. 14, e1002458; 2016). The study tracked 1,431 people who left postdoc positions at the university between 2000 and 2013 and had worked in labs supported by the US National Institute of Health's T32 funding scheme. Of the 899 postdoc alumni who did not also have a medical degree and who took jobs in the United States, 81% went on to work in research or teaching, with 336 of those in faculty or faculty-like positions. Another 12% of this cohort work in positions such as policy, communication, regulation, administration and business development.

Around one-quarter of the tracked postdoc alumni went on to work in other nations, and just over half of those gained faculty positions in research or teaching. UCSF postdoc alumni with both an MD and a PhD were also more likely to work in faculty positions than in non-faculty positions, either in or outside the United States.

Employment outcomes also varied by the UCSFlabs in which the postdocs worked, although the authors caution that the numbers were too small to be conclusive. Of 49 UCSF faculty members that each served as a mentor for at least 10 postdocs, rates for alumni moving on into faculty positions ranged from a low of 9% to a high of 93%, with a median of 43%.

A paucity of data about where PhD graduates work after their training is often cited as a hindrance to designing more effective employment training programmes. The study authors suggest that institution-based research is necessary to produce data that are sufficiently fine-grained to be useful.

A separate study in Science finds that around 40% of US PhD graduates in chemistry, physics or the life sciences think that there is a severe lack of information about non-research careers (H. Sauermann and M. Roach Science 352, 663–664; 2016). The study examined responses from nearly 6,000 US PhD students across 39 institutions, and found that those who said that they had thought at length about their future careers were less likely to decide to do a postdoc. Evidence that postdocs are likely to be default or 'holding pattern' positions points to a need for better career-planning services for graduate students, the authors say.