Epidemiology Careers: Salary and Job Outlook

Epidemiologists study disease outbreaks and how contagious and non-contagious diseases spread in populations. Some respond to public health emergencies after an outbreak has already occured, controlling the spread and educating the public about contagion; others investigate pathogens and risk factors in a laboratory, discovering how to prevent future epidemics.

Epidemiology combines cell and molecular biology with data collection and statistical analysis, and is one of the hotter career fields in the health sciences. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that the need for qualified epidemiologists will continue to grow faster than the average job growth rate. To browse available jobs in this area, see the Epidemiologist Job Listings search page, powered by Indeed.com.

Education Needed to Become an Epidemiologist

Epidemiologists who analyze data and work with the public need a Master's in Public Health, biostatistics, and/or nursing. Those who do more lab work need a PhD in biology or a medical degree.

To prepare for a graduate degree that leads to a career in epidemiology or infection control, students should take advanced courses in chemistry, cell and molecular biology, population biology, statistics, and health.

Who Hires Epidemiologists

Hospitals: Epidemiologists in hospitals may work as infection control coordinators. Those with Master's degrees in nursing or public health may apply for these postions.

County, State, and Federal Governments: Many epidemiologists work in the public sector investigating how disease outbreaks or health epidemics occur. They discover ways to avoid the spread of infections and how to stem the rise non-communicable diseases. For example, they may study the prevalence and distribution of non-contagious diseases such as diabetes, cancer, heart disease, or mental illnesses.

Pharmaceutical Companies: Drug companies hire epidemiologists to study disease occurance, applying their analyses to the creation of new medicines.

Academia: Those with PhDs in sciences related to epidemiology can work at universities as teachers and researchers. Academic epidemiologists can carry out their own investigations while training a new generation of future public health researchers.

Epidemiology Salary Information

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median salary for epidemiologists (in any sector, at any stage in their careers) is around $63,000 per year. The average starting salary is around $40,000 per year. This is collected from all over the US, but average and median wages vary by location. To see more specific data, you should browse epidemiology job listings in your state.

Annual salaries are proportional to the amount of work experience an epidemiologist has as well as their level of education. Those who have worked for more than five years as a publich health official, infection control coordinator, or disease researcher have an average salary around $62,000 per year.

Pharmaceutical companies offer the highest salaries, while public sector and university jobs tend to offer the lowest. On the whole, government agencies and hospitals have many more available positions than private sector companies. The mean pay for epidemiologists in different industries is shown the table below:

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