Any pathologists retiring now?

Interviewed for an AP/CP position that is dependent upon a senior retiring and going into a separate business venture. Now I'm told this guy plans on working as a pathologist for at least another 3 to 5 years. As the economic storm rages, might as well stay in economic safe harbor. Oh well.

Excuse my conspiracy theory, but I sometimes feel the massive wave of impending retirements that will open the door for a greatly improved job market that I hear many people in the path community predict is a way for marginal residency programs to help convince marginal candidates to sign up and train to get a marginal job after residency and 3 fellowships.

ZZPath said:

Interviewed for an AP/CP position that is dependent upon a senior retiring and going into a separate business venture. Now I'm told this guy plans on working as a pathologist for at least another 3 to 5 years. As the economic storm rages, might as well stay in economic safe harbor. Oh well.

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Kindoflost said:

Excuse my conspiracy theory, but I sometimes feel the massive wave of impending retirements that will open the door for a greatly improved job market that I hear many people in the path community predict is a way for marginal residency programs to help convince marginal candidates to sign up and train to get a marginal job after residency and 3 fellowships.

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Wow a run on sentence fragment...


The myth of great waves of retiring pathologists is always a myth.. (even without stock market downturns)

They love to tout some.. more than 10% of pathologist are over 60 number...

Pathologist Gaussian curve
Less than 30 : < 2%
30-40: 25%
40-50: 30%
50-60: 30%
60+ ~10%

big deal...

Actually the most recent number I heard was that close to over 50% of pathologists are over 60. And, while I agree that there might be some exaggeration, it's hard to argue with hard data. The information I heard came from the CAP. My number might be a little off, but I was surprised by how many older (near retirement) pathologists there are.

HRantz said:

Actually the most recent number I heard was that close to over 50% of pathologists are over 60. And, while I agree that there might be some exaggeration, it's hard to argue with hard data. The information I heard came from the CAP. My number might be a little off, but I was surprised by how many older (near retirement) pathologists there are.

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Was it over 60 or over 50?

I bet that it was over 50...
Which sounds lot a lot until you realize that the number of pathologist under 30 is almost 0.

so 50% 30-50 and 50% over 50...

I dug up an old thread discussing this...
http://www.amsa.org/tnp/articles/article.cfx?id=361

That was from the CAP from an article in The New Physician, April 2007:
"Like so many specialties, pathology faces a workforce crunch. Sodeman (Thomas Sodeman, MD, former president of the College of American Pathologists) cites Association of American Medical Colleges workforce data showing that 45 percent of active pathologists are over 55 years of age, so more than 6,000 may retire over the next decade. Residency programs are only turning out 500 a year."

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From that article also
Pathology at a glance

• Average salary: $183,000 to $359,000
• Residency slots: 525
• Residency requirement: four years for combined clinical/anatomic program
• Number of U.S. practitioners: 13,936

Sure 45% are over 55... but as alot of people point out, pathologists work past 65... lets say that 75% retire per decade after 55...
That's ~4800 pathologist retiring in the next decade...

Oh but wait in one decade 5250 new pathologist will be trained...

Every year we add enough people to be ~ 4% of the workforce...
If 90% of the pathologist over 55 retire, then we would be just about even...

Not factoring in the one double class year... that generated ~1000 new pathologist in one cycle...

The other hard fact is in ten years we train ~5000 new pathologist. If there are ~14,000 pathologist that means in any ten year block there are >33% of pathologists...
So 35-45 = 30%
45-55 = 30%
55-65 = 30%
65-75 = 10%