I plan on going into pathology, and from what I have seen the job market looks good for those who speak english well and are willing to live in small mid-western cities.
You will see lots of opinions on this subject. Some say that the job market totally sucks and that anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional. It is hard to argue with this opinion because it is not really presented as an opinion or an argument, it is presented as a fact.
From my perspective I still have not seen a qualified candidate who had significant difficulty finding a job (and I have been looking). People who have had trouble have had some of the following issues:
1) Poor communication skills (whether it is english speaking or something else)
2) Poor work ethic
3) Inability or unwillingness to search beyond a specific region (job openings can be very cyclical, pathology is a small field and certain areas are not always going to need someone)
4) Inability or unwillingness to compromise on specific duties in their career (like the hemepath fellow who refuses to sign out anything but hemepath, and then complains that no one will give them a job)
5) Wanting to be part time.
6) Not being proactive with their job search. Jobs will sometimes come to you, but often not.
That being said, people with one or more of these issues that I know have still landed good jobs. One particular person I know of fit into categories 1,2,3,and 6 plus failed boards twice and still was fine.
The most interesting comment I have heard said (not here) was someone who said, "The job market seems to be bad, yet everyone seems to be finding great jobs anyway." There are reasons for these negative opinions: Some people have unrealistic expectations. Others have a narrow window of what defines an acceptable job (either location, salary, practice type, whatever). Others are, to be frank, poor candidates who many do not want to hire.
I cannot speak to the job market in California. In the northeast I think it is still decent - I did not train there but yet still had feelers from both academia and private practice.
I do agree that there does appear to be a disconnect between leaders of national organizations and the reality of the job market. When you look at trends and data, it is true that
1) Many pathologists are at or nearing retirement age
2) Existing practices continue to grow and cannot handle the future work load with their existing number of pathologists.
So when you factor in these two datapoints, it is a natural assumption that the job market should continue to expand and there will be a need for more pathologists. But that hasn't seemed to be true - existing groups are working harder and not really expanding. Subsets of the market are breaking off (niche labs, pod labs, subspecialty signout, etc) which increases efficiency and decreases the need for extra pathologists.
One sign of a weak job market that many point out is that pathologists change jobs frequently - many are on their third or fourth position before they find the one they really want. There are many reasons for this, among them is that there are a lot of crappy jobs. But people in every specialty in medicine change jobs frequently.
