Wow, this is a lengthy post.
In my experience, if you're a PhD student who has a good publication record, you get a TT job within a few years of graduating. In some cases, I've seen positions created for graduating PhDs. The majority of these cases are biologists, although I know a few geologists and humanities PhDs who landed positions soon after graduating. I know a few people who landed jobs prior to even receiving their PhDs.
There are plenty of post docs. There are incredibly few TT positions moving on from them. Incredibly few.
Of the PhDs I know who want a TT job and have struggled to land one, most have been region-restricted, which is to say that they either specifically want to live in a specific area and thus have no applied widely for jobs, or their SO has a very good job somewhere and they don't want to leave that good job of a job that pays less elsewhere.
Sure, and while there are only a few major hubs (Boston, SF), there are colleges all over America - being in your late 20's or early 30's is a bad time to demand people move around the country. I'm sure you've heard that that vast majority of relationships started in graduate school fail?
Of the PhDs I know who are not in TT jobs, the majority are quite happily in career positions in industry or government. I know very few who have done more than one postdoc.
Yeah! I know a lot of people who are super happy since leaving academia - that's rather my point! No one is doom and gloom about ALL job prospect, we're doom and gloom about academia.
The problem comes from the mismatch between students who really truly want TT jobs and who really truly try to get a TT job, and who just never manage to land one. These are pretty rare situations, in my experience
The stats indicate that it's not that rare - something like 6-8% of PhD's will go on to TT positions, but far far more state that their intended career goal is a TT position.
Meh. The point of a PhD is that it is a necessary stepping stone in certain career paths. It is not, however, sufficient to have a PhD. If you're assuming that a PhD or any other certification will be sufficient to land you your dream job, then you're crazy.
This is a problem, and one of the oft proposed solutions is increasing the number of career scientist positions, instead of increasing the number of graduate students and post doc positions.
Sure, but if the job you want and would be happy in is a research PI or whatever, then a PhD is necessary to land that job. Mere earning potential is not the only reason people seek out credentials. This sort of "PhDs are horrible don't get em" approach is not really realistic ad misrepresents the job market just as much as the idea that PHDs are the Only Path.
That wasn't really my point - my point was that people who believe the only way to climb a science ladder is to get a PhD are wrong.