For a living - besides teaching other philologist to become philologist and, failing that, flipping burgers at McDonalds? Is there any traditional jobs for philologists?
Other than editorial work for a very specialized publisher (or part of a publisher), it doesn’t seem to me that there would be many options outside academe. Maybe someone with more recent experience in the field can add to this.
Keep in mind, though, that academic philologists do more than teach. As part of their duties at the university they also do research in the field and publish their findings. This includes publishing editions of the literature that interests them as well as various linguistic analyses of the literature.
I haven’t been in the field for about fifteen years, but at that time this was the smallest area of specialization (in European languages, at least) and demand for it was declining.
I wasn’t technically a philologist, but it was one of the three really impractical areas that I was tested in prior to starting my doctoral dissertation (the others were poetry and medieval literature). My focus on analysis of language and literature is one of the reasons I’m successful in my current job (I manage business analysts, project managers and technical writers and came up through their ranks).
GT