An analysis of the American College of Radiology job board suggests that for every job posted there are two radiologists seeking jobs, according to a study published online in the Journal of the American College of Radiology.
According to Anand M. Prabhakar, M.D. of the department of radiology at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, while the general impression of the radiology job market has been "grim," there has been little research done tracking employment statistics.
In this study, Prabhakar and his colleagues accrued data from the ACR jobs board during the between October 2010 and June 2013. The information included the numbers of monthly new job seekers, new job postings and job posting clicks.
The researchers found that the during the study period, the mean number of new job seekers was 168 per month--twice as many as the 84 job postings found on average per month.
No appreciable difference in the number of new job postings between 2011 and 2012 was found, while the number of newly registered job seekers ranged from 80 in May 2012, to a high of 418 in October 2010. October through November of 2010 represented one of the peak periods of job competitiveness (represented by the number of newly registered job seekers), along with August through November of 2011 and October and November 2012.
Consequently, the researchers concluded that there is a seasonal variation in interest in the ACR jobs board coinciding with the July 1 start date of fellowship training programs.
In addition, "because there is a steady supply of new jobs being posted throughout the year and a surge in job seeker interest in the summer and fall, job seekers can be reassured that a roughly equal number of jobs will continue to be available in the spring," the authors wrote. "Likewise, employers who want access to the largest number of new job seekers would be better served by posting positions in the summer and fall, when the most new job seekers are entering the radiology job market."
Prabhakar called landing a radiology job a "daunting" for new trainees.
"Expansion of the data collected by the ACR Jobs Board will better allow researchers to secondarily leverage this valuable resource to positively guide and shape the radiology job market for radiologists in future years," he said.
To learn more:
- read the study in the Journal of the American College of Radiology