Is it realistic for me to be a Physics/Astrophysics major?

I’ve had a passion for Astronomy ever since I was a kid, and I’ve been an amateur astronomer since 8th grade (currently a junior). I also qualified for the national astronomy olympiad earlier this year, so I do know my stuff.

However, my parents, who do understand my passion after shelling out their hard earned money for equipment, really want me to go into engineering. Since they’re immigrants who came here for economic opportunities, they don’t like the idea of me being stuck in low paid research and academia instead of being a rich engineer. And it’s not that I don’t like engineering (aerospace seems really interesting!), it’s just that it isn’t my real passion. But maybe I should just suck it up and compromise with them? IDK

A search of Astrophysicist on the Indeed.com jobs website today gets 14 results. A search of Engineer on that website today gets 271,828 results.

Many physics and astrophysics majors (BA/BS level or PhD level) do not work in the field due to limited jobs available*, but try to move into more marketable fields where their quantitative skills help (e.g. computing, finance, perhaps some types of engineering). However, it may be harder to get jobs in those fields than with a degree more directly related to that field, although taking some relevant out-of-major electives may help.

*Research and academia jobs should pay enough to live comfortably (like engineering), but the problem is that getting such a job can be much more competitive than getting an engineering job.

You can always major in applied physics and just take extra physics courses. I’m an engineering student and I’ll say this, physics is the up and coming field. Engineering positions have become fairly competitive. I know plenty of physicists that work for Lockheed, Boeing, NASA, DoD… Astrophysics is not exactly the best choice hence why I say do applied physics and just take astro classes on the side. Engineering starting pay is ok, it takes many years to build up to high level pay.

That’s because there’s really no job title called “astrophysicist”. Even most people with an astrophysics PhD who do research in the field would be called a “research scientist” or “professor”, not “astrophysicist.”

Besides, engineer has become a pretty broad term. Since “engineer” applies to a lot of different fields, a person with a specific engineering degree might not be competitive or all of those jobs - a person with a background in mechanical engineering isn’t going to be competitive for chemical engineering jobs without the right coursework/experience, for example. Also, a search for “human factors engineer” on Indeed.com yielded 1,201 results, but you don’t need a degree in engineering to be a human factors engineer (and actually, most engineering majors wouldn’t be great at it). People who go into the field typically have a degree in psychology or another social science.

A lot of the other results either aren’t relevant to engineering or don’t actually require an engineering degree, since Indeed searches job ad descriptions (think “someone who can engineer new solutions” or something like that) and not just titles. Here are some jobs I found by searching for “engineer”:

“Command and Decision Engineer” - which requires a high school diploma only
“Engineer” - which is a maintenance position that also requires only a HS diploma
“Business Intelligence Engineer” - they simply want someone with a quantitative background, as it’s really an analyst position. There were a lot of these; it’s a pretty common title at Amazon and other tech companies.
“Oceanographic Engineer” - a research assistant position in an applied physics department, studying oceanography. While they’d take an engineering major, they’d prefer a physics major!
“Big Data Engineer” - they’re using this as a fancy alternate term for a data scientist, which can be done by anyone with a quantitative degree and the skills required.
“Help Desk Engineer” - basically an IT position, and they’d prefer a CS or IT major
“Court Operations Supervisor” - why was this here? Because the job ad says “…re-engineers workflow and processes with the implementation of electronic court records.”

But the more important thing is that quantity of opportunities is not the most important thing. It’s quality of opportunities that matters, too. I’d rather have 1,200 jobs, most of which I would actually like to do, available to me than have 272,000 jobs I would be miserable in available to me.

The mid-career salary median for physics majors ($97,300) is not that much different than the mid-career salary median for aerospace engineers ($101,000). Physics majors do pretty well in the job market; even if you try for a research career and decide to pivot to something else, there are lots of things you can do with a quantitative degree like physics. I’ve done a job search recently, and there are so many positions that basically say “BS in any quantitative discipline.” If you major in astrophysics but major sure you pick up some useful skills along the way - computer programming, statistical analysis, SQL and other big data management techniques - you won’t really have issues in the job market.