ljus, I don't know 'around North America' but a BS in physics would probably meet our minimum requirements - so long as you had taken relevant classes beyond the basics and even better done a project using optics that has some relevancy to what we do.
I hope that you are aware that there is no general job market for a "physicist," particularly BS. Optics is probably OK, but there are probably > 10 EEs to every OE. That said, since there are fewer OEs, they're also harder to find.
Nonetheless, we do often hire physics majors, but usually as Systems or Test Engineers. We've gone through quite a few systems engineers, but are still on our original optics designer; this is in a company with about 100 engineers.
