Unfortunately, there is a lack of hard data on nontraditional careers - few places track people by what they used to be. Below are some of the best resources I've found for tracking and understanding the needs of this population. If you know of others that should be added, please let me know! I have many other career resources for scientists.

How Many Chemists Are There?

• Survey of Earned Doctorates, NSF - 2,704 new PhD chemists (2016)
• Science and Engineering Indicators, NSF,
• PostSecondary Teachers of Chemistry - 21,470 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014)
• Chemists and Materials Scientists - 98,400 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014)
• Chemists and Materials Scientists - 86,356 (American Community Survey (ACS), subset of US Census data, 2015)
• American Chemical Society - more than 158,000 members
• Supply and Demand of Chemists in the United States, Tiffany Hoerter, Jakoah Brgoch, William Richard (Rick) Ewing, Katherine Glasgow, Lynne Greenblatt, Laura Kosbar, Beatriz Rios-Mckee, Chapter 2, pp 15–33, Chapter DOI: 10.1021/bk-2015-1195.ch002, ACS Symposium Series, Vol. 1195, 2015 From book Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise; Cheng, H. N., et al.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.

How Many New Faculty Positions Are There?

• Chemistry Tenure-Track Faculty Openings List (Chemjobber and ChemBark) - 548 teaching/research openings and 72 teaching asst professor (2020 March 02), 562 for 2019, 552 in 2018, 590 in 2017, 457 in 2016
  • Medicinal Chemist - 222 positions (2018 Oct 07)
  • Process Chemistry - 224 positions (2018 Oct 07)
  • Academic Staff -20 positions (2020 March 02)
  • Computational Chemistry Positions - 32 positions (2018 Oct 07)
• The missing piece to changing the university culture, Nature Biotechnology 31, 938–941 (2013) doi:10.1038/nbt.2706. BALSA Group.
• What faculty hiring committees want, Charles B Wright & Nathan L Vanderford, Nature Biotechnology, 35, 885–887 (2017) doi:10.1038/nbt.3962, Published online 11 September 2017

How Much Do Chemists Make?

• Salary Survey and Employment Reports - ChemCensus 2015 , Salary Calculator (17th edition, 2019 data) (American Chemical Society)
• 2015 Life Sciences Salary Survey, Karen Zusi and Amanda B. Keener | November 1, 2015
• The impact of postdoctoral training on early careers in biomedicine, Shulamit Kahn & Donna K Ginther, Nature Biotechnology, 35,  90–94 (2017)  doi:10.1038/nbt.3766 . While postdocs are necessary for entry into tenure-track jobs, they do not enhance salaries in other job sectors over time. $
• The state of the job market in science, New Scientist, March 2016.
• Wrapping it up in a person: Examining employment and earnings outcomes for Ph.D. recipients, Nikolas Zolas, Nathan Goldschlag, Ron Jarmin, Paula Stephan, Jason Owen- Smith, Rebecca F. Rosen, Barbara McFadden Allen, Bruce A. Weinberg, Julia I. Lane, Science 11 Dec 2015, Vol. 350, Issue 6266, pp. 1367-1371. DOI: 10.1126/science.aac5949
• Are the "Best and Brightest" Going into Finance? Skill Development and Career Choice of MIT Graduates, Pian Shu, Working Paper 16-067, Dec 2015. Academic achievement in college is negatively correlated with a propensity to take a job in finance and positively correlated with a propensity to pursue a graduate degree or taking a job in S&E. In both high school and college, the two groups participate in different activities.

Where Do Chemists Work?

• Where Do STEM College Graduates work? (2012 census data, interactive circle visualization)
• Where do college graduates work (2019 Census Bureau data)
• The Nonacademic Careers of STEM PhD Holders, American Institutes for Research, April 2014. Lori Turk-Bicakci Andrea Berger Clarisse Haxton. Half or more of the STEM PhD holders in nearly all gender/racial groups were working in nonacademic positions (data from the 2010 Survey of Doctorate Recipients)

What Do Chemists Want to Do?

• Graduate Students
  • The declining interest in an academic career, Roach M, Sauermann H (2017) PLoS ONE, 12(9): e0184130. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184130
  • Improving Graduate Education to Support a Branching Career Pipeline: Recommendations Based on a Survey of Doctoral Students in the Basic Biomedical Sciences
    C. N. Fuhrmann†, D. G. Halme*, P. S. O’Sullivan, and B. Lindstaedt, CBE—Life Sciences Education Vol. 10, 239–249, Fall 2011. Interest in tenure track faculty positions decreases, and in everything else increases, at end of 2nd year in grad school.
  • Science PhD Career Preferences: Levels, Changes, and Advisor Encouragement, Henry Sauermann , Michael Roach, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0036307. Career preferences adjust significantly during PhD training in chemistry, physics and life sciences. Published May 2, 2012.
  • What Do I Want to Be with My PhD? The Roles of Personal Values and Structural Dynamics in Shaping the Career Interests of Recent Biomedical Science PhD Graduates,
    Kenneth D. Gibbs Jr. and Kimberly A. Griffin, CBE—Life Sciences Education Vol. 12, 711–723, Winter 2013.
  • Biomedical Science Ph.D. Career Interest Patterns by Race/Ethnicity and Gender, Kenneth D. Gibbs Jr. , John McGready, Jessica C. Bennett, Kimberly Griffin, PLoS ONE 9(12): e114736. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0114736. Published 2014 Dec 10.
  • The “new normal”: Adapting doctoral trainee career preparation for broad career paths in science, Rebekah St. Clair, Tamara Hutto, Cora MacBeth, Wendy Newstetter, Nael A. McCarty, Julia Melkers, PLoS ONE 12(5): e0177035, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0177035. Trainees adapt to career search efficiency, not career interests. Those seeking non-acadmic careers perceive less support from their institution and their advisor.
• PostDoctoral Scientists/Should I do a post-doc?
  • The autopilot postdoc, Karin Bodewits, Philipp Gramlich and David Giltner. NatureJobs blog, 26 Mar 2018. Unless you want to go into academia, don't do a post-doc.
  • The impact of postdoctoral training on early careers in biomedicine, Shulamit Kahn & Donna K Ginther, Nature Biotechnology 35, 90–94 (2017) doi:10.1038/nbt.3766. While postdocs are necessary for entry into tenure-track jobs, they do not enhance salaries in other job sectors over time.
  • Why pursue the postdoc path?
    Complex, diverse rationales require nuanced policies, Henry Sauermann and Michael Roach, Science, 6 May 2016, Vol 352, Issue 6286, 663. Postdoc was default, holding pattern.
  • Career Development among American Biomedical Postdocs, Kenneth D. Gibbs, Jr. John McGready, and Kimberly Griffin, CBE—Life Sciences Education Vol. 14, 1–12, Winter 2015. Postdocs know about more options, but have less clear goals, than grad students. Postdocs get more career development than grad students. Similar trends across different social groups.
  • Alumni Perspectives on Career Preparation during a Postdoctoral Training Program: A Qualitative Study, Jessica M. Faupel-Badger, Kimberley Rau†, David E. Nelsn, and Sophia Tsakraklides, CBE—Life Sciences Education Vol. 14, 1–8, Spring 2015. Alumni value structured training curriculum, mentorship, transdisciplinary environmand and professional identify.
  • Visualizing detailed postdoctoral employment trends using a new career outcome taxonomy, Xu, H., Gilliam, R., Peddada, S. et al. Visualizing detailed postdoctoral employment trends using a new career outcome taxonomy. Nat Biotechnol 36, 197–202 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.4059

Where Do Our Graduates Go?

• Visualizing detailed postdoctoral employment trends using a new career outcome taxonomy (open access) - Detailed career outcomes for NIEHS postdocs from last 15 years.
• Becoming more transparent: Collecting and presenting data on biomedical Ph.D. alumni, PeerJ Preprints, posted Oct 2017. Includes standard set of methods to collect data on Ph.D. alumni, and a single, unified taxonomy to classify career outcomes.
• University of Toronto - 10,000 PhDs project (located 88% of their 2000 - 2015 graduates, great interactive visualizations). Chemistry graduate were 43% post-secondary, 42% private sector, 8% public sector, 4% charitable sector.
• University of California San Fransisco - Tracking Career Outcomes for Postdoctoral Scholars: A Call to Action, data from 1,431 postdoctoral scholars from 28 training programs 
• Stanford University - 40% Academia, 40% Industry, 11% Tenure track faculty (2007-2009 PhD graduates). Largest initial employer of Stanford PhD Graduates was Stanford (post-docs).
• Where Will a Biology PhD Take You?, infographic based on the 2012 NIH Workforce Report, developed by the The American Society for Cell Biology.
• Leaving STEM: STEM Ph.D. Holders in Non-STEM Careers, 1 in 6 STEM PhD holders works outside a STEM field. Females and blacks more likely to leave STEM.
• The Science and Technology Labor Force The Value of Doctorate Holders and Development of Professional Careers (Book, Springer, 2013), in-depth analysis of the demand for PhDs on the labor markets of twelve countries.
• The 10,000 PhDs project at the University of Toronto: Using employment outcome data to inform graduate education, PLOS One, Reinhart Reithmeier , Liam O’Leary, Xiaoyue Zhu, Corey Dales, Abokor Abdulkarim, Anum Aquil, Lochin Brouillard, Samantha Chang, Samantha Miller, Wenyangzi Shi, Nancy Vu, Chang Zou Published: January 16, 2019https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209898
• Coalition for Next Generation Life Scientists
• Biased Beliefs and Entry into Scientific Careers, Ina Ganguli, Patrick Gaule, Danijela Vuletić Čugalj.  "We find considerable evidence that graduate students are excessively optimistic regarding the state of the academic job market, their chances to become faculty, and their chances to publish in the very best scientific journals."  

What is the Solution?

Changes to Educational System

• Graduate STEM Education for the 21st Century, published by National Academies in 2018 May
  • Examines the current state of U.S. graduate STEM education, and explores how the system might best respond to ongoing developments in the conduct of research on evidence-based teaching practices and in the needs and interests of its students and the broader society it seeks to serve.
• A new data effort to inform career choices in biomedicine Institutions will report student and postdoc outcome data, Science, 15 December 2017, 358 (6369), pages 1388-1389. Announcement of the Coalition for Next Generation Life Science.
• Enhancing Graduate and Postdoctoral Education To Create a Sustainable Biomedical Workforce, Fuhrmann CN, Hum Gene Ther. 2016 Nov;27(11):871-879. https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/hum.2016.154
• Transforming Training to Reflect the Workforce, Sci Transl Med. 2015 April 29; 7(285): 285ed4. Best practices from NIH BEST (Broadending Experiences in Scientific Training).
  • Value the broad range of research-related careers open to early-career scientists
  • View these careers not only as legitimate, but also as essential
  • Teach a strategic, skills-based approach to career planning in order to enable informed decision-making
  • Complement and support individual mentoring and training by faculty
  • Provide training simultaneously with graduate student and postdoc research
  • Encourage active, time-efficient career development
  • Rigorously test approaches
• Rescuing US biomedical research from its systemic flaws, Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 111, 5773–5777; 2014. Suggested educating graduate students, broadening their career paths, reduce number of post-docs, use more staff scientists, and more.
• Rescuing Biomedical Research
• Professional Development: Shaping Effective Programs for STEM Graduate Students, CGS conducted a two-year project to map the landscape of STEM professional development programs (2017 Jan)
• Falling Behind: Boom, Bust & the Global Race for Scientific Talen, by Michael S. Teitelbaum, 2014. Examines the boom and bust cycle of scientific research.

The Value of Networking

• Doctoral graduates’ transition to industry: networks as a mechanism? Cases from Norway, Sweden and the UK, Eloïse Germain-Alamartine, Rhoda Ahoba-Sam, Saeed Moghadam-Saman & Gerwin Evers, Studies in Higher Education, (2020), https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2020.1754783Transferable Skills in Scientists

• Identifying Transferable Skills and Competences to Enhance Early-Career Researchers Employability and Competitiveness, Eurodoc Report, 2018 October 01. Skills Infographic
• An evidence-based evaluation of transferrable skills and job satisfaction for science PhDs, Published: September 20, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185023.
  • Science PhDs enter the workforce equally well-prepared for both research-intentisve and non-research-intensive careers and remain equally happy in their chosen fields, based on skill competency
  • See also Transferrable Skills Guide by Adgene
• Emerging network of resources for exploring paths beyond academia, Fanuel Muindi & Joseph B Keller, Nature Biotechnology 33, 775–778 (2015) doi:10.1038/nbt.3282
  Published online 08 July 2015. See especially the list of resources in the supplemental material. $
• CGS Research in Brief: Closing Gaps in our Knowledge of PhD Career Pathways: How Well Did a STEM PhD Train Degree Recipients for Their Careers?, Hironao Okahana, Enyu Zhou, & Timothy Kinoshita. A large majority of survey respondents in various stages of their postdoctoral careers believe that their STEM PhD education prepared them well for their jobs. However, there are some differences between those employed by colleges and universities and those employed elsewhere.
• Identifying Critical 21st-Century Skills for Workplace Success: A Content Analysis of Job Advertisements, Rios, J. A., Ling, G., Pugh, R., Becker, D., & Bacall, A. (2020). Educational Researcher. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X19890600

Career Development Resources

• MyIDP from AAAS
• Versatile PhD
• ChemIDP from ACS
• Royal Society of Chemistry – rsc.org
              Undergraduate Skills Record https://www.rsc.org/cpd/undergraduates
              Exploring Careers - http://www.rsc.org/careers/future/