Job outlook and salaries

[premed0]

I am a second year medical student interested in pathology. Just wondering why if the market is as bad as people say and lots of people underworked, is the avg salary given on the aamc website for 2012 (which they get from MGMA Physician Compensation and Production Survey) around 375000 for clinical practice?
Thanks!

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[Sulfinator]

I am a second year medical student interested in pathology. Just wondering why if the market is as bad as people say and lots of people underworked, is the avg salary given on the aamc website for 2012 (which they get from MGMA Physician Compensation and Production Survey) around 375000 for clinical practice?
Thanks!

You're really better off getting this kind of info from real life people in person (in practice pathologists who you can talk with face to face). If I were you, I would just talk to someone rather than try to extract that type of info from this forum. This forum can be helpful for garnering some kinds of info about the specialty, but not really helpful for job market and compensation type info.

 

[Enkidu]

I am a second year medical student interested in pathology. Just wondering why if the market is as bad as people say and lots of people underworked, is the avg salary given on the aamc website for 2012 (which they get from MGMA Physician Compensation and Production Survey) around 375000 for clinical practice?
Thanks!

Heh, good question. I'd recommend that you pay more attention to the official survey than this forum.

I suppose that if pathologists were significantly underemployed, this survey would definitely catch it. Only if a significant number were actually unemployed altogether would this figure be skewed, although I don't believe that anyone has made that claim.

Perhaps this value might reflect a large discrepancy between new trainees, who may be underemployed, and established pathologists, who may be making huge incomes... Maybe that might be reflected in a large range or standard deviation for the values? Does the MGMA survey include that data?

 

[KCShaw]

Personally I can't say that any of the salary surveys or online average/expected salary listings I've seen appeared to have any link to personal experience or discussions I've had with folks in the wild, so to speak. I don't know if that's just chance, enough people at some extreme skewing the middle, or something about the survey populations and ways in which the surveys were crafted vs how the results portrayed. The top end of salary in pathology or some other fields -can- be quite high, but the same can be said of baseball players, most of who never make the minors/professional contract, much less break into the majors, much less do well enough for long enough to land the big contract.

 

[malchik]

One has to apply the usual caveats to survey data here. For one, the mean can be skewed upward by outliers, so median is probably a more informative statistic. Two, who is being surveyed? If half of pathologists were unemployed and only employed pathologists were surveyed, you wouldn't be seeing the whole story. Three, are survey answers likely to be truthful? Mikesheree has stated IIRC that he underreports in surveys like this. Others might overreport for some bizarre reason, who knows.

Whatever you think of this survey, please remember that NOT EVERYONE ON THIS FORUM THINKS THE JOB MARKET IS BAD. There are a few very frequent posters who repeat this stuff, and there are numerous others like myself who don't comment much on the job market but who think it is fine.

 

[Torsed]

375 is pretty high unless you are a partner. Most newly minted pathologists I know start around 200k. Lots of factors affecting salary / income. If you are interested in making money don't do path, you can live comfortable though.

 

[Enkidu]

If you are interested in making money don't do path, you can live comfortable though.

I dunno - path salaries are higher than the mean for physicians. I wouldn't say that salary is something that should deter someone. Pathology tends to attract cerebral types who might otherwise do something like neurology or psychiatry ("Maybe" medicine). Of those specialties pathology seems to have the best salary, based on the comments that I've heard.