What is the future job outlook for a virologist?

There are several paths you can take with virology, some of which depend on what kind of degree you get and some depends on what kind of work you want to do. Laboratory Medicine is a program that many colleges and universities offer, and last I looked there were 2 and 4 year degrees, as well as some certificate programs offered. These degrees are focused on preparing you to work in a hospital or clinic laboratory, processing human diagnostic samples. I have worked as a virologist in this setting, and the work is characterized by a handful of tests that have to be performed exactly the same every time (because you don't want to be careless with people's lives, which are directly impacted by your handling of their samples!). Maintaining excellent records is also part of the work (and truly, maintaining excellent records is something you should do in any scientific field, but in human diagnostics, if you don't maintain good records the laboratory could lose it's certification, and that could cost you your job). This is a growing field, probably a safe bet for employability for a long time. I found it to be rewarding in the sense that I was helping care for people by providing high quality diagnostic results, but also rather boring intellectually. As a result, I switched over into the research side of human diagnostic testing, where we were trying to improve tests or develop new ones. This kind of work involves a lot more variation in the kinds of tests you perform. Depending on the disease (human diseases that are common but hard to treat are the most likely to have jobs), this career path is not as fast-growing or as reliable as straight diagnostic work, but better than the next category, academic research. Working in a research diagnostic lab gave me more intellectual challenge, but I wanted to be involved in designing the experiments, not just conducting them. So I went back to school to get a doctorate in public health, focusing on virology and epidemiology. This kind of degree educates you to be able to take a problem like 'What is making this person sick? None of the diagnostic tests are finding a virus that explains their symptoms!' and start finding answers, by designing and conducting experiments. Unlike the laboratory medicine degree, a doctorate and research usually also means a lot of writing, as publishing your work is critical for advancing everyone's knowledge (what good are your results if no one else knows them?) but also for advancing your career. Performing research and publishing it while working at a university or other 'academic' setting is a tough job market right now, because funding for the work has been shrinking but the number of people who want to do it is growing. However, degrees like an associate's, a bachelor's, a master's, or a doctorate can also prepare you to work in industry, where companies are focused on developing treatments for diseases. many treatments currently being developed use viruses in some part of the process, even if the disease they are seeking to treat is not caused by a virus! That means you could do virology while trying to develop a cure for a cancer. Working in this environment is much more like the diagnostic laboratory or diagnostic research descriptions above, where you might do a few tests for a year or two, then switch to doing one or two others, etc. not as dynamic as academic research, but there isn't usually as much pressure to write and publish (though the higher your degree the more likely it is that you will need to write). This career path has lots of opportunities, especially in big cities like Seattle and San Francisco, but they are subject to the success of the companies and funding for specific disease problems. as a result, the more diverse experience you can get while you work on your degree, like techniques in immunology and bacteriology will make you more competitive. Finally, because there are so many different pathways you could take to work with viruses, it's impossible to give you an average salary ;)