I've said this in other threads. I have to continue being a dissenter.
I live in the USA and there are not enough chemists around here, especially analytical chemists. We have numerous positions we can't fill and turnover rate is ridiculously high because other companies can't fill their positions either so they do whatever they can to lure away our chemists. It depends on where you are.
Analytical chemists will continue to be in very high demand for the foreseeable future.Various sectors including manufacturing, environmental and safety, engineering, pharm, petro, tech industries....The need for fast, continual analysis of chemicals for R/D, quality control, etc. is only growing as our high tech industries become increasingly dependent on synthetics and molecular-scale technologies.
The problem that I see is that the jobs tend to be very localized to specific regions. I live in Indianapolis, a hub of pharm, petro, chemical, and engineering research in the midwest USA. If there is a problem with the industry here, it's that we can't get enough chemists. Come to Indiana!
A quick search on Career Builder currently lists over 100 jobs matching criteria for Category: 'Science', Search term 'Chemist' in my local Indianapolis area alone. And that is just one job listing website. There are jobs out there for chemists, just keep looking.