Well, I'm a path resident 🙂 If you're interested in more details about path (clin path or anatomic, although I know more about the latter), feel free to PM me. I can tell you that generally, anatomic pathology and micro prefer or outright require a PhD for many of the jobs - most pathology or micro residencies are "combined programs" now because of that (residency + PhD). I love love LOVE my field, but it is a long trek - 7+ years of work after your DVM while earning low resident and postdoc salaries is rough. All I know about optho is that it's quite competitive because there are few slots.
Job market kind of sucks for everyone right now, so I can't really speak to that.