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To much the same degree as in any other technical field, as the global economy shrinks and metamorphoses, chromatographers are challenged by the changing professional landscape. Although the overall unemployment rate among chemists who responded to an American Chemical Society (ACS) survey remained quite low at 2.3% in 2008 (1), beneath the surface of these corporate sea-changes are the recently unemployed, recently employed, or still employed technical professionals. The recent announcement of the pending acquisition of Varian, Inc. by Agilent is the most dramatic shift in the analytical instrument business so far this year; eventually, the changes that result will impact a large number of analysts.

I was unable to find any published job-change data for analytical chemists, but the number of analysts who have changed jobs recently, either internally or by moving to a different company, was made evident to me informally when I belatedly got around to sorting through my pile of new business cards acquired at conferences and during business trips. While entering what seemed like many more corrections and updates to my address book than I had expected, I asked myself how individuals whose affiliations and email addresses change might keep in touch with other professionals.