I'm on the academic job market right now, in the field of physical anthropology. I research evolutionary anatomy and genetics (i.e. I'm in the life sciences). This is my first year on the market. I've applied for 19 jobs. I've been outright rejected by nine, shortlisted by three, and have had one on-campus interview. The others I'll hear from within the next few months.
Of note, my one interview was at a medical school, not in an anthropology or even biology department. My field is structured such that we can research just about anything related to human evolution/biology, but time and time again I've seen my peers decline training/experience in anatomy because they wanted to study genetics, or pass on population dynamics because they wanted to study anatomy, or something similar. In other words, they did not take advantage of opportunities to broaden their backgrounds (and therefore increase the number of jobs they could apply for).
I tell my undergraduate anthro major students that anthropology can be a fine, employable degree if you're smart about it. I've had students go into finance (the equations used to model the populations of animals are the same as those used to model populations of money), programming (programming population genetics analyses prepares you to program lots of other things), business (learning a foreign language and becoming truly fluent not just in a foreign language but also that foreign culture is great when you add business classes), and of course solidly middle class lab jobs. I've also seen a lot of undergraduates working at Starbucks after they graduate because knowing about Native American culture (and not much else) is not exactly economically viable.
For PhDs, the job market is truly brutal. You have to be not only truly exceptional on paper, but also in person. I have seen folks in my field passed over time and time again because of their ahhh, 'subprime' personalities, despite their stellar CVs. I think most graduate programs do a poor to piss poor job of preparing scientists for the real world.
What saddens and amuses me more than anything else, though, is that almost all of my friends/acquaintances/colleagues are floored by the number of applications I've sent to schools. This is what I hear:
'That's not a very good school. Why did you apply there?'
'That's not a prestigious school. Why would you want to work there?'
'You know that's a teaching job, and you won't be able to do much research, right?'
'They don't pay very well. I wouldn't work for that little money.'
'The school is where? You couldn't pay me enough to live there.'
In other words, most people (at least people I know and speak with) think they are above a lot of jobs. Or they don't realize that geographic mobility/flexibility is critically important when you're a specialist like a research scientist. You have to be able to move to where the jobs are. You have to be willing to take a lower-paying position at a less than Ivy League school. I know my degrees from Michigan and Wisconsin do not entitle me to work at equivalent institutions.
As others have noted, the BS/BA became the new HS diploma, and now the MS/MA is becoming the new BS/BA. Not even a PhD entitles you to your 'dream job' - and too many people apparently have entirely unrealistic expectations about their graduate degrees.
I think most importantly, though, is that folks don't think about the ROI of an advanced degree. I absolutely would not have pursued a PhD if the school (and the state's kindly taxpayers) weren't paying for all of it. I have friends with six-figure student loan debts going into the humanities. That, to me, is the epitome of unrealistic, poor planning.
Like IndyColtsFan said, he would've been an astronomer or historian if he could've been. But there are economic realities to acknowledge and work with. ICF, I bet you still spend a lot of free time reading up on astronomy and history, yes? Just because you don't do something for a living, doesn't mean you can't still enjoy it. Not everyone's passions are employable...
