Comment by sega_sai

As a professor many years after the PhD my advice is to do the PhD only if you are genuinely excited / cannot stop yourself from doing research. Only then it will outweigh the negatives of difficulties of getting the jobs, somewhat low pay etc. At least from my point of view I always tried to work on what was interesting to me and what I was good at/or it was interesting to learn vs optimising what is more high profile/sexy. I don't think it is a universal advice but at least I always enjoyed what I did