Every two years, the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes The Occupational Outlook Handbook, a nationally-recognized source of career information. The Handbook describes what workers do on the job; working conditions; the training and education needed; earnings; and expected job prospects in a wide range of occupations.
The "chiropractors" section can be found on line at: http://stats.bls.gov/oco/ocos071.htm. In it, the following comments are made:
"Employment of chiropractors is expected to increase rapidly and job prospects should be good. "Chiropractic care of back, neck, extremities, and other joint damage has become more accepted as a result of recent research and changing attitudes.
"In chiropractic, as in other types of independent practice, earnings are relatively low in the beginning, but increase as the practice grows.
"Job prospects are expected to be good for persons who enter the practice of chiropractic. Employment of chiropractors is expected to grow faster than the average for all occupations through the year 2008 as consumer demand for alternative medicine grows. Chiropractors emphasize the importance of healthy lifestyles and do not prescribe drugs or perform surgery. As a result, chiropractic care is appealing to many health-conscious Americans.
"Median annual earnings of salaried chiropractors were $63,930 in 1998. The middle 50 percent earned between $36,820 and $110,820 a year."
In comparison, the outlook for MDs was also positive, but did include some warnings:"However, future physicians may be more likely to work fewer hours, retire earlier, have lower earnings, or have to practice in underserved areas."
Given the daunting task of reviewing the chiropractic profession in a few pages, the Handbook's section on this is well-balanced and well-written. With the exception of recognizing only 46,000 chiropractic "jobs" (the number of licensed DCs is over 58,000), the information is relatively accurate. Several chiropractic organizations are also included as resources for more information, among them Dynamic Chiropractic and ChiroWeb.com.
