EARNINGS!
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There are a few things going on.
It's a mature industry. It's been developing new products for around 100 years. The world probably doesn't need a lot of new basic chemical products, so what's the growth engine? Also, see the next bullet down, but the more that the industry moves toward market-pull based innovation and not technology push, the more frustrated management will get with spending money on R&D, because it ends up focusing on incremental innovation, not totally new platforms.
MBA-based enshittification. This is true of most industries and services right now. Goes from ill-fated "market pull" based innovation efforts. From costs for raw materials and pi----g off their suppliers to flat salaries in the face of increasing selling prices and inflation to deferred maintenance, the desire for short-term gain until the MBA finds a new role in a different industry remains high. There are fewer and fewer engineers and scientists in the management ranks that think strategically and long term as well as understanding the industry.
International competition. They are building new, low-cost plants in low cost labor countries (Asia) or near raw material supply (Middle East). If you're in EMEA or NA, this has implications for employment and company health and personal outlook as an employee. This fits hand-in-hand with the first two bullet points - Asian companies just manufacture, not innovate, and they aren't encumbered with the additional overhead and misdirection of the MBA management class.
Chemicals is not seen, rightly or wrongly, as a se-y industry. It's dirty heavy industry, sometimes makes the places they're located smell bad, and perceived as risky from a safety and regulatory perspective. NGOs have popped up to directly oppose the chemical industry and make a lot of noise; their work product and objective is public opinion being aligned against the industry. Also, because it's a mature industry, it's not something that's going to be invested in as heavily as the se-y stuff like "tech", which also doesn't have the associated negatives I've listed in this bullet. All of the sustainability stuff has created departments within investor groups that exist to pressure the chemical industry, for instance, in saddling them with additional regulatory burden or to get out of entire product lines that are perceived as 'bad'.
I could go on, including things like the H1B situation which is a political hot potato, but from an employee perspective could be seen as being used to depress wages. But together, they conspire to make the chemical industry a shadow of what it was in the mid-90s, when it was the US's leading exporter. Today, we see the legacy in things like DuPont selling off Kevlar and Nomex, products which were a backbone of the company for decades. The whole Invista/Lycra/Chemours/Dow/Dupont/WTF it will be now and how many pieces is a microcosm of how things are now - a commoditized industry that will be acquired and divested at the whim of disconnected business forces.
This is all pretty sad, but I think about it a lot as someone who has been long part of the industry from education to practice for years. You have a lot of it in you, and people ask what sort of career they or their kids should get into. For these reasons, I can't really recommend chemistry and the chemical industry, but honestly, I'm not sure just what I'd suggest at this point. I think there are new and different ways to make money in the industry and there are plenty of precedents to help guide you - things like the steel industry.