I have responded before because dealing with a pandemic is way outside my experience.
Unfortunately for me, I come into contact with vast amounts of people in the course of my job. Also my immediate family lives in the State Capital City which has the history of first being hit with the new flu strains that hit Australia. Our hospital system down here is not the best for keeping up with day to day let alone something major.
So I'm not going to be in the best situation if the pendemic does eventuate.
A pandemic can hit from any virus that does make the right mutation, not just this one. There has been numerous attempts over the years to warn everyone of that.
I cant give much towards preparing for this kind of disaster, apart from common sense answers and there are others that can give far greater input to this here than me.
I can give answers and opinions to subjects that I am farmiliar with, or I can respond to ideas you might have on this subject.
My guess is there are others here that are like me and read the flu related threads and leave the comments up to others that have more experience/knowledge to answer.

having only general knowledge, there is in reality, only so much you can do to protect yourself from the flu, or any variety of disease. Unless you are willing to live in a hermetically sealed bubble, away from all civilization, you are at risk for whatever appears on the horizon. And that is no guarantee you won't develop some life-threatening condition, even in the bubble. Sure we buy survival items and tell ourselves we are prepared for disaster, but very little is in our actual control. If you spend your life in worry about this epidemic and that pandemic, this war and that terror attack, this tornado or that hurricane, you might just have a heart attack from the fear of it all. Every man and every woman has a date with death at some point, no one has cheated it yet. I can't quote any stats, but many many thousands die each year in car crashes, far more than 9/11 too. From my understanding, there is no vaccine yet for bird flu, and it has not yet been transmitted to humans. Scientists are working on it and may find an answer, but worry won't make it happen any faster. Each day has enough trouble without worry about the next.

Insight as to which job would be best to have in the event of an H5N1 Pandemic?

As far as I know, none of us here have lived through a pandemic of such magnitude for which there was no current cure. So, I don't know what more you would expect us to relate. The best I could relate would be complete speculation in relation to the job I have now, and I did that. Several others did the same or mentioned how bad their jobs would be, and added to the scope by relating that what they did at home was just as potentially dangerous in regards to contracting Bird Flu as from their workplace.

If I were going to go off-the-wall I would list the ultimate job as Astronaut on the Space Station, or Antarctic Research Scientist, but those could very well be equally as deadly for other reasons, and that's just sillyness.

Did you want to expand the scope of a discussion of surviving a H5N1 Pandemic beyond jobs into preparation or do you have something else in mind?

In the mean time I'm going to go over the pros and cons of each of my pocket knives again... LOL

Regarding 12 to 18 months... The current line of thinking based on the study of other pandemics is that a Bird Flu Pandemic, if it should reach a point of human to human transmission, would come in 3 waves and last up to 3 years. Economically it will be devastating, so I can't think of too many jobs that will remain viable in such a situation.

Soldier perhaps?

I don't know.

More Insight? I already gave you the secret antidote. What more do you want?
Screw the pocket knives - you need to figure out which flavor and brand of kimchi you can stomach. There's another side of kimchi besides its antiviral properties - it's a repellent. The more you eat, the farther away from you non-eaters will stay.

Anyway, your original question was flawed. If "everyone" is confined to their homes, by definition there will be no "best jobs". Everyone will be at home, not working.

However, to placate you, I will offer the obvious "easy" answers:

Good Jobs:
Hermit
Rural Farmer
Lighthouse Operator
Eskimo
POTUS (or other government officials high enough in status to be a bunker dweller)

Bad Jobs:

Doctor
Nurse
Cop
Teacher
Family member of a teacher
Any other job in a school.

You want insites? OK, here is:

1) It's coming, it's a matter of when.
2) It will change between now and then, so the preperations we have now will probably be worth a bucket of cold spit when it happens.
3) We will know it is happening when it is happening, not before.

Oh, were we talking about a flu panademic? I thought we were talking about comet impacts. Or maybe the heat death of the universe.

Here it is in a nutshell: Unless you are a hermit, living totally alone, flamethrower any bird within 50 feet of you, and are 100% self sufficent for an indefinant period of time, you are at risk of catching this when it hits. Any contact with humans or birds will put you at risk, and if you are thinking of waiting until the Feds call it a panademic before you go into your plague shelter, you will be exposed, so go into hiding now. But if you have to come out of seclusion for any reason, you will run into someone with the virus after this theoretical panademic occures, and you won't have any antibodies in your system that can deal with it.

We talk about other items because we all know how to deal with getting sick and reducing the risk in the first place. You talk about the Spanish Flu of 1918- the vast majority of those who became ill survived. The weak, the young, and the old were at greater risk, as were those who's lungs were already screwed up, such as from mustard gas exposure.

I hate to sound like a jerk, but let's be blunt. There is no job that will keep you safe, except POSSIBLY long term alien abduction subject.

This won't be a direct answer to the question, but hopefully relevant. The FACTS are that everything we read in the paper and hear on the news are all speculative in nature. They can say "inevitable" all they want, the fact is, there hasn't been any person to person transmission of this virus and might not be. Secondly, the FACTS are that crowd avoidance is always a good idea. The 1918 flu was spread by WWI soldiers being transported about, and then barracked in various places in large groups. In some ways, this is my opinion, that then-phenomena predated or current technology of travel and might replicate how a virus would spread. So if we knew a virus of that type was spreading I wouldn't be on airplanes or any mass transit, or mass anything. Finally, as someone else said, it is a FACT that most of those infected lived to tell about it. I'm more worried about certain global realities than I am any flu, not to diminish its future relevance. Each day has enough trouble of its own. I'll take that when it comes.

Always nice to see polite folks engaged in intelligent conversation...

"The weak, the young, and the old were at greater risk, as were those who's lungs were already screwed up, such as from mustard gas exposure."

The 1918 flu killed mostly the healthiest folks- young adults and it reached to
every part of the globe except some pacific islands. I think many are ignorant
of the potential for problems of any pandemic and deserve a heads up and some
discussion in survival forums about what can be done.

I think I will go sharpen my pocket knife.

I'm currently working on an apparatus that will pressurize my home and office. Then I merely need to bar the doors to keep any unwanted flu carriers out. I did it by reversing the nozzles on my vacuum cleaner and using up the plastic sheeting and duct tape left over from the last terrorist alert. I need help from everyone coming up with a catchy name for it. Please try to include the word "Tactical" in your submissions, as I have found that it greatly increases sales.

Regards, Vince

I agree and this has been discussed resently, this thread being part of that discussion.
However, we all read different threads and respond when we have something of interest to say, a question or some experience or knowledge of the discusssion. (and a bit of humour here and there) We also tend to respond to people who crack the s*%ts when they didnt get the answers they wanted.
The question about occupations is from what I can see only a part of the big picture reguarding pandemics. There is also a number of other questions that can be asked to spark interest or to bring out other ideas in this matter. Just as in everyday life, sometimes you have to narrow things down/be more specific or broaden your questions and sometimes ask multiple questions to get useful answers/info.
From one of your previous responses you were disapointed that we didn't show more insite. I am disapointed that you didn't show more insite and use this thread to leed into more questions and conversation to bring out more useful info and ideas.
I hope you still do because I read with interest these threads, and choose to respond where I can. Notice that I used the word choose, because last time I looked my response wasn't mandatory.

I hope that the tone of my response does not offend, as it is 2am here and I really should be asleep.

PS I still carry a knife while suffering from the flu (when I'm not in bed, of course)