Update on the diagnostic radiology employment market: findings through 2007-2008

To describe the employment market for diagnostic radiologists in 2007-2008, with attention to differences among subspecialties.

The authors conducted the most recent in a series of annual surveys of vacancies in academic departments and obtained data from the placement service of the ACR (its Professional Bureau) during its operation at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America. The authors also obtained survey data on how radiologists' actual workloads compared with what they desired.

The ratio of job listings to job seekers at the placement service, which serves both community and academic positions, fell to 0.60 for 2008, compared with 1.1 to 1.2 for 2003 to 2006 and 0.22 to 3.8 in the preceding decade. In 2007, workload averaged 3% less than desired, unlike a close match in 2003. Vacancies per academic department have been growing slightly. Data on academic vacancies indicated that interventional, pediatric, and particularly breast imaging were the fields with the most intense shortages. General radiology and (marginally) neuroradiology were at the opposite end of the spectrum. At the placement service, there was a particularly high ratio of job listings to job seekers for interventional radiology and a particularly low ratio for nuclear medicine/radiology.

The overall job market remains very much intermediate between the highs and lows that have occurred since 1990, but finding highly desirable jobs is likely to be somewhat more difficult, and filling vacancies somewhat easier, in 2008 than in the past few years. There was a strong indication of a 3% surplus of radiologists in 2007. Interventional radiology, pediatric radiology, and particularly breast imaging are the subspecialties in which positions are most difficult to fill; neuroradiology, general radiology, and nuclear radiology may lie at the opposite end of the spectrum.