Ouch

The graphic below says it all.  From a good story by the Sacramento Bee.

Shocker -- Survey Finds Journalism Jobs Hard to Come By

The famous annual survey of the journalism job market -- conducted by colleagues in my college -- finds that it's been a tough year for journalism jobs.  Press release here. 

The lede:  

Graduates of the nation's journalism and mass communication programs in the spring of 2009 confronted a job market unlike any that graduates have encountered in the nearly 25 years for which comparable data are available.

And yet, there are jobs out there for young journalists, especially in smaller markets but even in some big markets where newspapers especially have shed more expensive and more experienced reporters and editors.  But it is tough.

Journalism Jobs

In a shout out, colleagues Lee Becker and Tudor Vlad released the annual job and salary survey this week at AEJMC. Becker's been doing this survey forever, or at least since about 1986 (same thing, right?). There are various stories about the survey -- Editor & Publisher has one, for example, as does U.S. News and World Report and one of my favorite publications, The Red & Black. The lede is the same: bad news for journalism/mass comm grads when it comes to jobs and money. PR grads have the best chance of finding a job. Journalism, not so much. According to the report:

"Only six in 10 of the graduates had full-time employment six to eight months after graduation," noted the UGA researchers in the report. That is the lowest level of full-time employment reported in the 23-year modern history of the annual survey.

The complete report is available here. Read it and weep.