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It is a very long road (having done it and then watched my spouse do it too). But if you are passionate about research in a particular area, and you like teaching, there is no better career.
Career prospects depend very much on the specific field. If you are fortunate enough to love disciplines such as those in business, engineering, medicine, or nursing, there are jobs (it's been tighter recently with the economic downturn but I mean in cimparison to other fields). In such areas, there are still more jobs than PhDs, and for that reason most do not require a post-doc before a permanent position. One can start on the tenure-track straight out of grad school and salaries are at a premium. There are exceptions of course and keep in mind I'm being fairly general here. But the take home point is there isn't one answer as it depends so much on ones' field (and you must - absolutely must- chose your field based on what excites you most, not based on far away job prospects). Those taking this path because it looks like a fun job in the end, but are not passionate about one's field, will be so disappointed and likely not very good at it either.
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