Please tell me and move this if this is not appropriate for me to be posting!
I was deciding between MD/DO and Cardiovascular Perfusion for awhile. Obviously, I can't know for sure until rotations, but Anesthesiology is on my radar. As I understand it, their job market was poor for quite some time and seems to have rebounded recently.
For childcare reasons, I want to live relatively near the grandparents. No quoting, but I'm from north central Illinois (south of Rockford, north of 80, FAR west of Chicago). My in-laws are what I would call the "exurbs" of Chicago (~2 hours away from the city, pretty sparse but no commercial farms). My own mom's house used to back up to a hog farm, so we're out in the sticks.
My partner works permanently remotely as a software engineer, so we could live in the middle of nowhere or in Rockford and don't have to be in Chicago/the Chicago suburbs proper. It's just important to me to have the extended family relatively close long-term so the kids can have a close relationship with their grandparents and for aging parents later.
Is Anesthesiology reasonable job market wise if you need to live in a relatively specific place like that (i.e. Illinois north of I-80)? Was that reasonable when the job market was worse pre-pandemic?
Does a fellowship make you more marketable even for the little community hospitals? If so, would it make me marketable *enough*?
I appreciate any insight you may be able to offer!