Choose the odd one out: a pizza delivery guy, an engineer, a Walmart cashier and theoretical mathematician. The answer is theoretical mathematician because the other three can feed a family of three.

Granted the above is just a joke but whenever you've got a choice between theoretical and applied math, the choice should be the later atleast from the perspective of career benefits.

Now to be specific to your question: I would say that, all things being equal (which they rarely are), applied math still retains its job advantage over theory even in academia. Both aren't resource-intensive: all you need is pen, paper and a decent computer to do research. However, there will probably be more funded projects available and more oppertunities for inter-disciplinary research in applied math. Companies and institutions really want to be able to model and simulate complex phenomenon and are eager to sponsor and collaborate on that sort of research.

Specifically, in my field (reacting flows), mathematical modeling and accurate simulations save a lot of money and time that would have otherwise been wasted building prototypes and conducting numerous trial-and-error experiments. So, people in the field collaborate with applied physics and math folks all the time. |

Disclaimer: My field is not math and I'm hazarding a guess.

Choose the odd one out: a pizza delivery guy, an engineer, a Walmart cashier and theoretical mathematician. The answer is theoretical mathematician because the other three can feed a family of three.

Granted the above is just a joke but whenever you've got a choice between theoretical and applied math, the choice should be the latter at least from the perspective of career benefits.

Now to be specific to your question: I would say that, all things being equal (which they rarely are), applied math still retains its job advantage over theory even in academia. Both aren't resource-intensive: all you need is pen, paper and a decent computer to do research. However, there will probably be more funded projects available and more opportunities for inter-disciplinary research in applied math. Companies and institutions really want to be able to model and simulate complex phenomena and are eager to sponsor and collaborate on that sort of research.

Specifically, in my field (reacting flows), mathematical modeling and accurate simulations save a lot of money and time that would have otherwise been wasted building prototypes and conducting numerous trial-and-error experiments. So, people in the field collaborate with applied physics and math folks all the time. |

Disclaimer: My field is not math and I'm hazarding a guess.