Emerging role · No. 15 fastest-growing
Epidemiologists: job outlook 2025–35
BLS projects epidemiologists employment to grow 18.7% from 2025 to 2035 (No. 15 fastest), with 800 openings a year and a $87,220 median wage.
Data compiled 2026-10-09 · BLS 2025–35 · O*NET 31.0 · AEI May 2026
Projected growth, 2025–35
+18.7%
Typical entry education: Master's degree.
BLS Employment Projections 2025–35
Job outlook
U.S. projections, BLS Employment Projections 2025–35
- +18.7%
Projected employment change, 2025–35
From 12,800 jobs in 2025 to 15,200 in 2035. All occupations: +3.5%.
BLS Employment Projections 2025–35
- 800
Openings per year, 2025–35 average
Includes openings from growth and from workers who retire or change occupations.
BLS Employment Projections 2025–35
- $87,220
Median annual wage, 2025
BLS Employment Projections 2025–35
- Master's degree
Typical education for entry
BLS Employment Projections 2025–35
Primary profiles: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook · O*NET OnLine
Core tasks
Highest-importance task statements, O*NET 31.0 Database
- Communicate research findings on various types of diseases to health practitioners, policy makers, and the public.
- Oversee public health programs, including statistical analysis, health care planning, surveillance systems, and public health improvement.
- Investigate diseases or parasites to determine cause and risk factors, progress, life cycle, or mode of transmission.
- Educate healthcare workers, patients, and the public about infectious and communicable diseases, including disease transmission and prevention.
- Monitor and report incidents of infectious diseases to local and state health agencies.
Most important skills
Importance on a 1–5 scale, O*NET 31.0 Database
- Complex Problem Solving4.25
- Critical Thinking4.25
- Judgment and Decision Making4.25
- Reading Comprehension4.25
- Active Listening4.12
- Science4.12
AI exposure
How much of the work large language models touch
- 56%
High exposure (β, human-rated)
Share of the occupation's tasks an LLM could speed up by at least half at equal quality, with software-dependent tasks at half weight.
Eloundou et al., Science 2024
- 61.9%
Augmentation share of AI use
Share of global Claude.ai conversations on these tasks with a classified collaboration pattern (excluding unclassified conversations) where AI worked with the person rather than doing the task.
Anthropic Economic Index (May 2026)
Sources & methodology
Every figure on this page comes from the public datasets below. We do not edit the source values; derived figures are explained here.
- Emerging roles are the 30 occupations in the BLS fastest-growing occupations table (Table 1.3, 2025–35), ranked by projected percent change.
- Growth, openings, wage, and entry education are the BLS figures as published; openings include growth plus replacement needs.
- Tasks are O*NET 31.0 core task statements ranked by importance; skills are O*NET importance ratings (1–5).
- Exposure is the human-annotator β score from Eloundou et al.: the share of an occupation's O*NET tasks that a large language model could do at least 50% faster at equal quality, counting tasks that need extra software (E2) at half weight. We label β under 0.25 low, 0.25–0.5 moderate, and 0.5 or more high; these bands are ours, not the authors'.
- BLS occupations are matched to O*NET-SOC codes with the BLS O*NET-to-NEM crosswalk; where a BLS occupation spans several O*NET occupations, we average their values.
BLS Employment Projections 2025–35
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Projections program. Occupational projections, 2025–35, and worker characteristics, 2025 (Table 1.2); fastest growing occupations (Table 1.3); factors affecting occupational utilization (Table 1.12).
Vintage: 2025–35 projections, released August 27, 2026. License: Public domain (U.S. federal government work). Retrieved 2026-10-09.
This page includes information from the O*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. Metaintro has modified all or some of this information. USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications.
Vintage: O*NET 31.0, August 2026 release. License: CC BY 4.0. Retrieved 2026-10-09.
Eloundou, T., Manning, S., Mishkin, P., & Rock, D. (2024). "GPTs are GPTs: Labor market impact potential of LLMs." Science, 384(6702), 1306–1308. doi:10.1126/science.adj0998. Occupation- and task-level exposure data from the authors' public repository (openai/GPTs-are-GPTs).
Vintage: Published June 21, 2024; human annotations of O*NET tasks collected 2023. License: Data repository: MIT License. Retrieved 2026-10-09.
Anthropic Economic Index (May 2026)
Massenkoff, M., Lyubich, E., Sacher, S., Hitzig, Z., Zhang, S., Heller, R., & McCrory, P. (2026). "Anthropic Economic Index report: Cadences." Anthropic, June 26, 2026. Claude.ai usage metrics by occupation, global, May 2026.
Vintage: Release of June 26, 2026; Claude.ai conversations from May 2026. License: CC BY (data). Retrieved 2026-10-09.
Keep exploring
Related pages built on the same dataset
- Occupational Health and Safety TechniciansNo. 13: +19.4% projected growth
- Hearing Aid SpecialistsNo. 14: +19.4% projected growth
- Occupational Health and Safety SpecialistsNo. 16: +18.5% projected growth
- Substance Abuse, Behavioral Disorder, and Mental Health CounselorsNo. 17: +18.4% projected growth
- All 30 fastest-growing occupationsBLS Employment Projections 2025–35