Clinical laboratory personnel held about 302,000 jobs in the U.S. in 2004. More than half of these jobs were in hospitals. Most of the remaining jobs were in offices of physicians and in medical and diagnostic laboratories. A small proportion were in educational services and in all other ambulatory health care services. Although hospitals are expected to continue to be the major employer of clinical laboratory workers, employment is expected to grow faster in medical and diagnostic laboratories, offices of physicians, and all other ambulatory health care services.
Job opportunities are expected to be excellent, because the number of job openings is expected to continue to exceed the number of job seekers. Employment of clinical laboratory workers is expected to grow faster than average for all occupations through the year 2014, as the volume of laboratory tests continues to increase with both population growth and the development of new types of tests.
Although significant, job growth will not be the only source of opportunities. As in most occupations, many openings will result from the need to replace workers who transfer to other occupations, retire, or stop working for some other reason.
Salary ranges for clinical laboratory scientists are on the rise.
Median annual earnings in the year 2000 were $40,510
Median annual earnings in the year 2003 were $42,823
Median annual earnings were $45,730 in May 2004
In 2006 , the average salary for a Clinical Laboratory Scientist ( Medical Technologist) in the U.S, according to a national salary tracking organization, was $ 51,779
Visit: Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos096.htm
