A chemistry PhD qualifies you to do advanced research in chemistry -- nothing more. If anything a PhD will work against a candidate in a general industry tech role, because the assumption is they either a) failed in the academic job market for whatever reason, or b) will get bored in a non-research role and split early.

Personally I'm biased against chem/bio/physics etc. PhDs who come in for development jobs because the ones I've known have had terrible, mind-blowingly bad coding practices drilled into them since undergrad and are strangely more resistant to learning best practices than those from more tech-related fields.

The chemistry PhD job market is generally considered oversupplied, particularly with the pharmaceutical industry in general retrenchment (see, e.g., <http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/01/07/the_phd_prob..., and yes I do realize the age of that link, but nothing much has changed since then).

Its 40-50% just due to degree, based on my estimation. I've got another pile of rejections for different reasons.

About 80% reject me before phone interviews, etc.

Literally the only pre-interview cited rejection reason was a lack of degree.

I always thought normal rejection rates varied between around 75% (in a strong job market) to 95% in down markets, say 2007-2009. When I was looking for a job, a 40-50% rejection rate would have been utterly amazing.