Clinical and laboratory work
What does a Clinical Laboratory Technologist do?
Taking the tests, scans and records the rest of healthcare relies on.
What the day is like
- Indoors, under a roof.
- Largely on your own.
- Right or wrong, to a standard.
- The same shape each day.
- Answerable for your own work.
The facts
- Pay
- $62,930 a year, median
- Clinical Laboratory Technologists and Technicians, May 2025
- Usually needs
- Bachelor's degree
- Several years, and usually a formal qualification.
- Jobs
- +3% projected change in jobs, 2025-2035 projections
- Demand looks growing slowly
What is good about it
- You answer for your own work rather than for other people, which suits more people than admit it.
What people find hard about it
- Little patient contact
- Repetition
- Night and weekend cover
Invisible work: nobody notices a correct result, everybody notices a wrong one.
Will machines take this job?
What machines will do to this work. Reading images and samples is being automated fastest; taking them well, and knowing when a result is wrong, is not.
How to find out whether it suits you
Visit a hospital laboratory and follow one sample from arrival to result.
Would this actually suit you?
CareerDNA works that out from what you choose rather than from what you say about yourself: two minutes of choosing between real jobs, a few puzzles, and some questions about what you are like. It is free, it saves as you go, and it will tell you plainly where the answer is thin.