Jobs in Physics: Researching or Teaching
Jobs in Engineering: Loads, and doing what you actually learnt.
That's a key difference. There aren't jobs in physics where you use what you learned apart from to pass that on, or try and find out more which is pretty niche (as is being a physics journalist). In engineering there are tons of jobs doing what you actually learned.
I had a lecturer tell me physics graduates were 3rd behind medicine and law graduates in terms of pay, but that's because they can very easily go on to be things like quantitative analysts and earn a shit ton in the city.
I'm not going through the US system (I'm at a UK University), and I'm not sure how relevant this difference is.
In the UK if you choose physics, you'll only be doing physics modules (with the odd modules taught by mathematicians teaching "maths for physics"). I get the impression that a degree in the U.S. is less specialised/more diverse? If anyone can tell me basically how the whole "majoring" thing works would be great.
The difference between physics and engineering is massive. I have a few friends who switched courses at the end of the first year from physics onto civil engineering and mechanical engineering courses. In physics you'll be going through a lot of things like electromagnetism, and crucially before the end of the first year you'll be pretty much done with newtonian stuff.
The things you'll cover in physics may end up being similar to a lot of what engineers learn. Things like classical mechanics, wave physics, basic electromagnetism, thermodynamics, etc.
But in physics you'll move onto einsteins relativity and quantum mechanics, have the possibility to go into astronomy and cosmology and space-time stuff, or learn more maths, or photonics, or nanotechnology, or energy in an environmental context etc.
I really enjoy the physics, but I knew a few people who found it too abstract and thought it didn't have enough of an application.
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I’m now two years into my physics PhD and I love my job. I work on great projects with kind and bright people. I am highly autonomous and usually talk to my “boss” every 2-3 weeks to keep him informed about what is going on. My job is challenging, but not nearly as hard as the studies were. Even the parts I don’t like are a piece of cake compared to most other jobs I can think of. I am totally underpaid compared to some of my friends who went to work in industry, but I can live with that. I prefer my independence and the lack of politics at the university. Payment will change after I finish, but it’s not like I can’t wait. I have no idea what I will do then, but I love that. How often do you have such a great opportunity to choose what you want to do day to day?
The studies were hard and I was often on the verge of quitting. I love physics, but sometimes it can get too much. You won’t believe what people have thought up over the centuries, and sometimes you just stop to care, especially in fields that are less of interest to you. The better times started for me with my final thesis. This was a real project where I had time to sink my teeth in. Before that, you kind of hurry from one topic to the next, but with that much time, you get to a different level of understanding. In fact, you can become the person who knows your stuff best quite quickly.
In hindsight, even if I will never work in physics again, I would not want to miss my study. This may sound cheesy, but I feel kind of empowered. You are used to so complicated stuff, that if you want to learn pretty much anything slightly math or logic related, it just feels easy most of the time.
In my opinion, learning physics is a goal in itself and not just a tool so you can do X. I also think there is no end to it and you will hardly ever know where the journey will take you. If I understand you right, you just finished high school? This is way too early to focus on any field in physics. It’s like installing Starcraft first time and then trying to decide which late game strat you want to play in some matchup before even choosing your race. I would recommend starting as broad as you can, and when it’s really time to choose something, you will know what you want. Until then, always choose what excludes less. That will of course lead to you learning a lot of stuff you will never use directly and some people might not like that. But, as Nietzsche puts it, “Im Gebirge der Wahrheit kletterst du nie umsonst.”
Your job opportunities (at least here in Germany) are excellent. As someone mentioned before, it’s about 2% unemployment for physicists with diploma (what you got here before they introduced the bachelor/master thing). Most jobs you can do have been mentioned I guess: R&D in industry or university (including more or less education), financial sector, consulting, sales for very special products. Of course there are also more unusual things, like astronaut or chancellor… Or more stuff searching than researching, like SETI, prospecting methods, medical imaging. Government was mentioned, e.g. PTB. There are probably a lot more “fringe” jobs that we can’t think of at the moment.
On a side note, I think financial sector likes physicists because you can do risk minimization with statistical methods (e.g. Monte-Carlo) which are standard in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics (who would have thought!). Of course general analytic thinking never hurts.
I won’t say anything about engineering, because I have no clue about it. 
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EPT
