What Epidemiologists Actually Move Into

Occupation move map · Life, Physical, and Social Science · Also covers: Medical Scientists, Except Epidemiologists

Most career-change advice for epidemiologists is somebody's opinion. This page is not. It is built from 58,121 observed occupation changes in the U.S. Current Population Survey — real people, tracked from one job to the next, not survey respondents describing what they would like to do.

Of every 100 epidemiologists who moved to a different occupation group, here is where they went.

Destination	Share of movers	Observations	Move type	Evidence
Other Physical Scientists	7.0%	142	lateral	Observed
Chemists	6.8%	4	lateral	Thin evidence (fewer than 30)
First-Line Supervisors of Office and Administrative Support Workers	4.1%	8	lateral	Thin evidence (fewer than 30)
Medical and Clinical Laboratory Technologists	1.6%	14	lateral	Thin evidence (fewer than 30)

The most common destination is other physical scientists, at 7.0% of movers (142 observed transitions); the second is chemists at 6.8% (4). Neither is a default outcome: the leading move is roughly a 1-in-14 result among people who move at all.

Seen at the group level, split estimated

Movers from epidemiologists were observed entering the occupation groups these belong to, but the split to each specific occupation was not directly observed, so no share is shown.

Environmental Scientists and Specialists, Including Health — estimated, 0 direct observations
Atmospheric and Space Scientists — estimated, 0 direct observations
Astronomers — estimated, 0 direct observations
First-Line Supervisors of Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Workers — estimated, 0 direct observations

Occupations with a similar skill profile

Ranked by skill similarity from O*NET, not by observed moves. A place to look, not a measured path.

Who moves into epidemiologists

The occupations whose movers most often arrive here, by observed transitions.

Other Physical Scientists — 119 observed moves (3.6% of that occupation's movers)

How to read these numbers honestly

These are shares conditional on moving — the denominator is people in this occupation who changed to a different occupation group, not everyone in it. Most people in any given period do not move at all, so this page tells you the direction of movement, not how likely you are to move.

The underlying occupation codes are re-derived from job descriptions at each interview, which manufactures some transitions that never happened. We control for that four ways: we work at coarse occupation groupings rather than fine codes, we down-weight occupation changes not corroborated by an employer or industry change, we prefer the dependent-coded monthly survey over the retrospective annual one, and we shrink thin cells toward a skill-similarity prior. The residual uncertainty is why every row carries its observation count.

A row is marked Observed when at least 30 direct transitions were recorded; Thin evidence when fewer were; and Estimated when none were — the move to that occupation's group was observed, and the split to this particular occupation is allocated by skill similarity, so no share is shown.

Snapshot cps-movegraph-759b8583ddf6, frozen June 30, 2026. Held-out validation: precision@5 of 0.238, against 0.163 for a popularity baseline and 0.154 for a skill-similarity baseline.

What this page cannot tell you

It cannot tell you which of these moves fits your own record. A destination that many movers take is still the wrong move for most individuals — the ranking is population-level, and your last three roles, your credentials and what you actually want change it substantially.

See which of these moves your own experience already supports.
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