Are chemistry PhD students at German universities paid decently? Or do they move from one six-month contract to the next? Are there enough positions funded by the federal states or through third-party funding, or scholarships? Is it an exception that the position or scholarship has already run out and doctoral students finish their PhDs “on unemployment benefit”, or has this now become the rule? Do they live off their parents or even claim Hartz IV? Do they have to work as waiters on the side to make ends meet? The GDCh investigated these questions in 2016, surveying PhD students aged between 24 and 33 with degrees in chemistry, biochemistry, food chemistry, etc., who were undertaking their PhDs in Germany at the time of the survey. The detailed analysis of the survey was published in the October 2016 issue of Nachrichten aus der Chemie, starting on page 1012, and is available in the Wiley Online Library.