>>12842839there aren't many straight up physics jobs. you need to land a job at a national lab, and that's hard. not as hard as a professorship, but hard. i've spoken to folks at both ORNL and Argonne, and seen people at both ends of the "do i enjoy my job?" spectrum. some were miserable, some have set world records and aim to set more.
personally i'm an EE PhD candidate with a physics and CS background. from my connections on campus alone i could walk onto half a dozen interesting jobs tomorrow with zero effort, from satcom, to imaging, to wireless power transfer, to consulting, etc. engineers have it easy, but keep in mind many of the opportunities are start ups. but when you have people chasing after that venture capital for you, life is good