Math jobs are either in:
- teaching, which except for tertiary education, is poorly paid
- or a very limited, competitive and unstable pool of jobs in academia and maybe a handful of companies with large research departments
We're probably talking 50 000 people in math research worldwide and probably millions of underpaid regular math teachers at middle and high schools.
It's like engineers in post-Communist European countries, sure there were tons of graduates, but 80% of them were doing something else than the thing they graduated in.
But that's what everyone is lamenting the loss of, that AI is taking that specific job.
Going through forced detours in life doesn't make it a "good choice".
The good choices are the ones where people finish their studies/apprenticeships and then immediately work in their direct field. For example a law student becoming a lawyer.
At most I'd consider that a "mediocre choice".