In chemistry at least, the PhD is the entry card for non-technician work. Post-docs are seemingly required for the academic path, and are of some use for pharma, but the union card is a must.
Does the salary compensate the amount of effort to get there though?
I had a friend who was a chemist but she left the field to pursue data science instead after her pharmaceutical company started even more layoffs in R+D - it seems pharma companies are more interested in intellectual property law than drug development these days.
