From The Epidemiology Monitor Newsletter, February 2005

Asking itself what are the best jobs to pursue for the next five years, Fast Company magazine has identified the top 25 jobs, and the job of “epidemiologist” is listed as #8 on the list. In making its selection, the magazine reports in a special edition that it relied heavily on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, from Salary.com and on the work of Carnegie Mellon University’s Kevin Stolarick, an expert on the creative class in society.

In establishing the selection criteria, Fast Company focused on jobs in high demand, with the potential for salary growth, that require a college education, and that provide opportunity for creativity. Fast Company weighted each of these factors differently in arriving at its overall index with the highest weights given equally to demand and salary growth potential.

A job as an epidemiologist ranked high primarily because of anticipated high demand, the level of education required and, as with other science related jobs on the list, the opportunities for creativity. The assessment of high demand is perhaps the most open to discussion among these criteria. According to Fast Company, this criteria will be met for epidemiologists “because as populations grow and barriers to travel go down, virus outbreaks will likely increase”. Not mentioned were other chronic disease population health problems such as those related to tobacco or obesity.

The first ten jobs on the list are:

1. Personal financial advisor
2. Medical scientist
3. Computer software engineer
4. Chiropractor
5. Environmental engineer
6. Biochemist and biophysicist
7. Sales manager
8. Epidemiologist
9. Computer System Analyst
10. Athlete

In order to give their readers a good idea of what some of these jobs entail, Fast Company published a profile of some of the persons who currently hold jobs on the list, including that of Michael Bell, an epidemiologist from the special pathogens branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Pointing out that the “sexy aspect of the field is being a ‘virus hunter’ like Dustin Hoffman in the 1995 film ‘Outbreak’, the magazine gives a more typical picture of the occupation by informing readers that “epidemiologists range from people who never leave the sanctity of their offices, spending their time writing books on how best to design studies and calculations, to people living out of a suitcase and collecting data from the field.”

In addition to the prediction about being in high demand because of increased disease transmission, the magazine states that epidemiology skills in understanding populations might have other applications such as “understanding a customer base for the purpose of product development.” That’s good to know for epidemiologists who think their only employment opportunities are in govenment or academia. View the list of top jobs in 2005..