Job Market Turns Much Worse

Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Graduates
by Lee B. Becker, Tudor Vlad, Devora Olin
Grady College, University of Georgia

The sharp downturn in the national economy and the collapse of the economic model for media industries had significant impact on the job market that the 2008 journalism and mass communication graduates entered as they completed their studies.

As a result, significantly fewer of them than a year earlier–when the job market already was weak by historical standards–had at least one job offer on graduation, were able even to land a job interview, or find full-time employment.

Only six in 10 of the graduates had full-time employment six to eight months after graduation. That is the lowest level of full-time employment reported by graduates of the nation’s journalism and mass communication programs in the 23-year modern history of the Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Graduates.

As recently as 2000, three-quarters of the graduates of these programs reported full-time employment when they returned the survey instrument. One year ago, seven in 10 reported having full-time employment.

The drop in the level of full-time employment–from 70.2% of graduates in 2007 to 60.4% in 2008–is the largest change recorded in levels of employment in the 23 years that the same methodology has been used to track these statistics.

The job market that had plummeted after its peak in 2000 and had begun to improve in 2003 simply crashed. Only half of the graduates had full-time work in the field of communication.
The only good news for 2008 graduates was that those who did find work received the same average salary as graduates a year earlier. With deflation, that actually represented a very slight increase in purchasing power capability.

Survey Methodology
The Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Graduates is designed to monitor the employment rates and salaries of graduates of journalism and mass communication programs in the United States, including Puerto Rico, in the year after graduation. In addition, the survey tracks the curricular activities of those graduates while in college, examines their job-seeking strategies, and provides measures of the professional attitudes and behaviors of the graduates upon completion of their college studies.

Each year a sample of schools is drawn from those listed in the Journalism and Mass Communication Directory, published annually by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, and The Journalist’s Road to Success: A Career Guide, formerly published and printed by the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund, Inc., and now available on the web. Schools list themselves in the AEJMC Directory. All U.S. programs accredited by the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications and all U.S. members of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication are in the AEJMC Directory. To be included in the Newspaper Fund Guide, the college or university must offer at least 10 courses in news-editorial journalism and those courses must include core courses, such as an introduction to the mass media and press law and ethics, as well as basic skills courses such as reporting and editing. Selection of schools for the sample is probabilistic, so that those chosen represent the population of schools in the two directories. In 2008, 86 schools were drawn from the 480 unique entries of four-year programs in the U.S. (including Puerto Rico) in the two directories.

Administrators at the selected schools are asked to provide the names and addresses of their spring bachelor’s and master’s degree recipients as well as a cover letter endorsing the project to be mailed with the questionnaire. The questionnaire was mailed in November 2008 to all spring graduates receiving either a bachelor’s or a master’s degree from the selected programs. A second questionnaire was sent to nonrespondents in January 2009. A third mailing was sent in March 2009 to graduates who had not responded to the first two mailings. For 10 programs that had provided email addresses, the third mailing was supplemented by an email message as well. The graduates could either return the mailed instrument in a self-addressed, postage-paid envelope, or complete the instrument online. All graduates were given a unique password for access to the web survey and could use it only once. The respondents also were told they could win an iPod in a lottery by participating.

The questionnaire asked about the respondent’s experiences both while a student and in the months since graduation. Included were questions about university experiences, job-seeking and employment, and salary and benefits.

In 2008, the survey was mailed to 9,526 individuals whose names and addresses were provided by the administrators of the 86 programs. A total of 2,840 returned the questionnaires by the middle of June of 2009. Of the returns, 2,542 were from students who reported they actually had completed their degrees during the April to June 2008 period. The remaining 298 had completed their degrees either before or after the specified period, despite their inclusion in the spring graduation lists. A total of 609 questionnaires was returned undelivered and without a forwarding address. Return rate, computed as the number of questionnaires returned divided by the number mailed, was 29.8%. Return rate, computed as the number returned divided by the number mailed minus the bad addresses, was 31.9%. Of the 2,542 usable questionnaires, 2,360 (92.8%) were from bachelor’s degree recipients and 182 were from those who received a master’s degree.

The findings summarized in this report are projectable to the estimated 50,560 students who earned bachelor’s degrees and the 4,270 students who earned master’s degrees in academic year 2007-2008 from the 480 colleges and universities across the United States and Puerto Rico offering programs in journalism and mass communication. Comparisons are made with data gathered in graduate surveys back through 1986. Data on master’s degree recipients have been available since 1989.

Sample error for the 2008 undergraduate sample is 2.0%, and sample error for the graduate sample is 7.3%. In both cases, the confidence level is set at .05, meaning that the odds are 19 to 1 that the figures presented in this report are within plus or minus sample error of what would have been obtained had all graduates of journalism and mass communication programs, rather than a sample of these graduates, completed questionnaires. Sample error, of course, is only one of the sources of error in survey estimates. In addition, many comparisons between subgroups in the sample and between the 2008 and earlier samples are made. Standard statistical tests have been used to evaluate the observed differences, or trends.

Women made up 75.2% of respondents. Members of racial or ethnic minorities made up 19.3% of those returning questionnaires. These sample characteristics are similar to those in recent years. Overall, the sample reflects slightly higher return rates from women and slightly lower return rates from minorities, based on the known characteristics of the 480 schools from which the sample was drawn.

Funding for the 2008 graduate survey was provided by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication, Cox Newspapers Inc., Gannett, the Hearst Corporation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the National Association of Broadcasters, Newspaper Association of America, the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation of the Society of Professional Journalists, the Scripps Howard Foundation, Specialized Information Publishers Foundation, the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota, and the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia.

Employment
Most of those who completed their studies for an undergraduate degree in journalism and mass communication in the spring of 2008 had at least one job offer of some sort upon graduation. Yet the percentage of graduates with at least one job offer–71.5–was down sharply from a year earlier. And the average number of job offers–at 1.3–also was considerably lower than the figure of 1.6 a year earlier.

The vast majority of those who received a bachelor’s degree in journalism and mass communication in the spring of 2008 and looked for work were able to land at least one job interview. More of the graduates reported only being able to get a telephone interview than the year before, and fewer were able to get at least one in-person interview. The differences were slight but unlikely to be due to chance, based on traditional statistical analysis.

More than half of the graduates had found full-time employment by Oct. 31, the last date before the graduate surveys first went into the mail and a reference point for employment of those completing the survey across the seven-month period of fieldwork for the study (CHART 1). At 56.3%, the level of full-time employment matches the previous low of 56.1% in 2003 and was down dramatically and significantly from the 63.3% figure a year earlier.

Chart 1 shows a basic pattern of employment for journalism and mass communication bachelor’s degree recipients in which employment levels increased coming out of the weak economic period at the beginning of the 1990s and built to a peak in 2000. The level of employment dropped dramatically the next year, leveled off, and then started to recover in 2003. That recovery stalled in 2006 before the crash of this past year. Among those who sought work, the level of full-time employment dropped from 73.8% in 2007 to 65.7% in 2008. The unemployment rate increased from 13.0% to 17.4%.

A second measure of level of employment, namely at the time the graduates returned the survey instrument, underscores the difficulty graduates in 2008 had in the market. Traditionally, this measure shows a higher level of employment than the measure focusing on Oct. 31 as the reference point. Graduates may hold off returning the survey instrument until they find a job (though the evidence actually is counter to this). What is more likely is that those who return the survey late simply have been looking for jobs longer and are thus more likely to achieve success. Among 2008 graduates, 60.4% reported being employed full-time when they returned the survey instrument, down nearly 10 points from the 70.2% figure of a year earlier. That degree of change year-to-year in response to this measure is unprecedented going back to 1986, when the survey methodology used today was put into place. The absolute level of full-time employment also is the lowest recorded, though it is statistically comparable to the level of 1991. The level of unemployment–at 17.5%–is the highest ever recorded in the survey based on this measure.

Since the graduates do return the surveys over the course of the fieldwork, it is possible to track employment rates across time, based on this second measure of employment. The analysis suggests that the market in 2008 was flat across time. There is nothing to suggest that the market the 2009 graduates will be entering is better than the one experienced by the 2008 graduates.

In general, the experiences of journalism and mass communication graduates as they enter the labor market are shaped by the overall economy and its link to and impact on employment levels. When the overall economy is weak, reflected in high unemployment rates, journalism and mass communication graduates have difficulty finding work. When the economy is stronger, journalism and mass communication graduates are more likely to find work. A comparison of employment rates, however, shows that the journalism and mass communication students in the last 10 years have more often than not found the labor market more difficult than has their cohort of workers of the same age. Since 1999, the unemployment rate for journalism and mass communication graduates has been higher than the unemployment rate for workers aged 20 to 24 every year but two. One of those years was 2007. The unemployment rate for journalism and mass communication graduates in 2008 was 14.3%, compared with a cohort unemployment rate of 12.1%. The gap has been larger in the recent past, but the suggestion is that journalism and mass communication graduates are not in a favorable position–as they were in the last decade–when it comes to finding work.

Only 84.0% of the 2008 bachelor’s degree recipients with a full-time job said it is a permanent position, as opposed to a temporary job or an internship. That figure was 92.3% a year earlier and has never been at the 2008 level back to 1994, when the question was first asked. Even among those with a part-time job, the percentage saying the job was permanent declined in 2008 to 37.4% from 42.6% a year earlier. About one in five of those with a full-time job and about two in five of those with a part-time job also do freelance work on the side. Those figures are basically unchanged from a year ago.

Only about half of the graduates found work–either part-time or full-time–in the field of communication in 2008. The figure has been this low before, but the 2008 figure is eight percentage points lower than it was only a year ago. The percentage of graduates doing non-communication work is up slightly (but statistically significantly), and the percentage unemployed is up markedly.

The impact of the collapse of the economic underpinnings of the newspaper and, to a lesser extent, the television industries is reflected in the experiences of those graduates who had prepared for careers in those segments versus those who were preparing for other communication careers. In 2008, 59.0% of those who earned a bachelor’s degree with a focus on news editorial (generally print) journalism had full-time work when they returned the survey instrument. That figure had been 12.7 percentage points higher a year earlier. Those preparing for a career in telecommunications (broadcasting) had a full-time employment rate of 56.8%, and that figure had been 10.5 percentage points higher a year earlier. The telecommunications segment of the field traditionally has been more difficult to enter than the other segments.

In contrast to the experiences of graduates with a print journalism or a telecommunications preparatory track, those who had studied for entry into advertising and public relations had more success in 2008, and their level of full-time employment was closer to that of their 2007 counterparts. Among those targeting advertising as a career through that field of study, 65.1% in 2008 had full-time jobs within six to eight months of graduation. That figure had been 6.4 percentage points higher a year ago. Among those who studied for entry into public relations, the full-time employment rate was 70.9%, or 4.9 percentage points lower than a year before. In sum, a bad market was worse if you were looking for work in the newspaper or telecommunications industries.

As in the past, female students (who disproportionately seek work in advertising and public relations) had more success in the job market than male students. The gap was unchanged from a year earlier. Minority graduates had less success in the job market in 2008 than did graduates who are not classified as members of a racial or ethnic minority group. The gap in 2008 was about six percentage points, and it had been 12 percentage points a year earlier. Minority graduates, as in the past, were less likely to have landed a job in the field of communication than nonminority graduates. The gap was about the same in 2008 as it was a year earlier.

Across recent years, graduates have increasingly reported that the work they were doing involved various uses of the Internet. In 2007, for example, 55.6% of those graduates with jobs in communications said they were writing and editing for the web, up from 41.5% a year earlier and 22.6% in 2004, when the question was first asked. In 2008, in contrast, only 50.6% of the graduates with a communication job said they were writing and reporting for the web. The percentage of graduates with communication jobs who said they were designing and building web pages also was down in 2008, compared with 2007. And across a whole range of other activities involving the web, smaller percentages in 2008 were involved in web work than in 2007. In some cases, the drop was dramatic, such as with producing audio for the web. In some cases, the declines were rather small, such as in using the web in promotion.

Clearly graduates in 2008 were less likely to find communication jobs that involved certain kinds of web work than had been the case a year earlier, and this is another indication of the difficult job market that 2008 graduates experienced. Those graduates who found work with a daily newspaper actually were more likely in 2008 than in 2007 to do writing or editing for the web. The same was true in television and in public relations. If the graduate was employed in some nonmedia company (but still doing some type of communication work), she or he was much less likely to be doing writing or editing for the web. Graduates who found work in radio and in consumer magazines were more likely to be doing web research in 2008 than a year earlier. Those who found jobs with daily and weekly newspapers were less likely to do this kind of work. In sum, there is evidence that the weak job market overall actually moved graduates away from jobs that involved the newest communication activities associated with use of the Internet. In some industry segments, the movement was more pronounced than in others.

Master’s degree recipients received 7.8% of the total bachelor’s and master’s degrees granted by U.S. journalism and mass communication programs in 2007-2008 and made up 7.2% of the sample for the 2008 Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Graduates. The job market for the master’s degree recipients in 2008 also was stressed. Only 70.9% of the master’s degree recipients had at least one job offer on graduation. The figure is statistically comparable to the 71.5% figure for bachelor’s degree recipients and, as for the bachelor’s degree recipients, was down dramatically from a year ago, when 77.1% of the master’s degree recipients had at least one job offer on graduation. On average, the master’s degree recipients had 1.3 degree offers on graduation in 2008, compared with 1.6 a year earlier.

On Oct. 31, 61.0% of the master’s degree recipients had a full-time job in 2008, compared with 67.9% of the master’s degree recipients one year earlier (CHART 1). Among those master’s degree recipients who looked for work in 2008, 66.1% found a full-time job, down from 78.8% a year earlier. Master’s degree recipients and bachelor’s degree recipients who looked for work had comparable full-time employment rates at the Oct. 31 reference point–66.1% and 65.7% respectively.

When the 2008 master’s degree recipients returned their survey instruments, 65.4% of them held full-time jobs. A year earlier, 77.4% of them held full-time jobs at that point. Only in 1991 had the level of full-time employment, based on this measure, been lower in absolute terms. Two in 10 of the master’s degree recipients in 2008 had part-time jobs when they completed the survey. Part-time employment is almost always underemployment. Only 2 of the 182 master’s degree recipients surveyed sought only part-time work.

Salaries and Benefits
Bachelor’s degree recipients with full-time jobs earned a median annual salary of $30,000 in 2008, just as they had a year earlier. Master’s degree recipients in 2008 had a median salary of $38,000, compared with the median salary of $40,000 earned by 2007 master’s degree recipients. These are the nominal salaries–or salaries in 2008 dollars.

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) was negative 1.3% in May of 2009, compared with a year earlier. So in terms of inflation-adjusted dollar, the bachelor’s degree recipients actually earned slightly more in 2008 than a year earlier, though the master’s degree recipients earned considerably less. In 1985 dollars–the benchmark for the survey–bachelor’s degree recipients in 2008 earned $15,086, compared with the $14,890 earned by bachelor’s degree recipients a year ago. And the 2008 master’s degree recipients in 2008 earned $19,109 in 1985 dollars, compared with the $19,853 earned by 2007 master’s degree recipients.

Comparable data on other fields are not available. The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) reported in September of 2008 that the average annual starting salary offer to all college graduates had increased 7.6% over a year earlier, to $49,224. The estimate comes from college and university career service offices around the country, rather than from what graduates in a given field actual report receiving. NACE reported that graduates in the liberal arts in 2008 received an offer, on average, of $36,715, or considerably more than the $30,000 that 2008 journalism and mass communication bachelor’s degree recipients reported they received. NACE reported that computer and information science graduates received, on average, an offer of $48,677, while business graduates received $46,800. NACE does not track separately journalism and mass communication recruiting offers.

The annual salary for those bachelor’s degree recipients who found full-time jobs in the daily newspaper industry–and there were many fewer than the year earlier–was, on average, $1,120 greater than the salary of 2007 bachelor’s degree recipients with full-time jobs in the daily newspaper industry. Those 2008 bachelor’s degree recipients who found full-time jobs with weeklies earned, on average, $850 less per year than did the 2007 bachelor’s degree recipients.

The median salary earned by 2008 bachelor’s degree recipients who found full-time work in radio increased to $30,500, or $5,500 more than the media salary earned by 2007 graduates. The salaries earned by bachelor’s degree recipients in television, however, were static in 2008 compared with a year earlier–at a very low $24,000 median figure.

The median annual salary earned by the 2008 bachelor’s degree recipients who found work in an advertising agency or department was $30,000–or $2,000 less than was earned by the 2007 graduates entering advertising. Bachelor’s degree recipients who found work in a public relations department or agency earned, on average, $31,000 annually in 2008, down from $32,000 a year before.

The 2008 bachelor’s degree recipients who found work in radio, cable television, public relations, specialized information publishing and with online publishing companies earned above average salaries, as (Chart 2) indicates, while those who found work in dailies, weeklies, television and consumer magazines earned below average annual salaries. Graduates with full-time jobs in advertising earned salaries at the average. Also earning above average salaries were those 2008 graduates who said they found full-time work in communications but not with one of the traditional employers shown in the chart. They reported median annual salaries of $32,000. Those journalism and mass communication bachelor’s degree recipients who reported finding full-times jobs outside communication reported a median annual salary of $31,000. Overall, those journalism and mass communications bachelor’s degree recipients in 2008 with full-time jobs in communications had an annual median salary of $30,000, or $1,000 less than the annual salary of those journalism and mass communication graduates with full-time jobs outside communications. A year earlier, graduates who took jobs in communication earned $30,500 on average, while those who had full-time jobs outside communication earned a median annual salary of $30,000.

Salaries are only part of the compensation package for workers. They also receive benefits packages that can contribute significantly to their lifestyles and well being. In 2008, journalism and mass communication graduates who were able to find full-time jobs received considerably less in terms of benefits, either those their employer paid or those they paid themselves. Across the range of nine benefits monitored, 2008 bachelor’s degree recipients reported lower levels of compensation than did the 2007 graduates. Employers were less likely to pay all of basic medical, major medical, prescription drug or disability than a year before. They also were less likely to pay for dental coverage, life insurance, maternity and paternity leave, child care and retirement. In each of the nine cases, graduates also were less likely to report that the employer paid part of the benefit in 2008 than had been the case in 2007. The differences were often slight, but the overall picture is clear. The 2008 journalism and mass communication graduates suffered a significant loss in terms of employer-paid benefits compared with what was reported by the 2007 graduates.

Closing Comments
For several years, as the negative news swirled about the changes in the media industries, and particularly in the daily newspaper industry, graduates of journalism and mass communication programs around the country seemed protected. The dramatic weakening of the job market after 2000 seemed to have halted in 2003, and recovery seemed to be on the way. There was evidence of a slowing of that recovery in 2007, but little evidence yet that the entry-level part of the job market for journalism and mass communication graduates was in decline. In the second half of 2008 and the first half of 2009, all that changed.

By almost all indications, the 2008 graduates of the nation’s journalism and mass communications programs found themselves in a disastrous job market. Job offers on graduation were down. Opportunities of job interviews had declined. The level of full-time employment at the benchmark Oct. 31 reference point was eight percentage points lower than a year earlier. Full-time employment based on a second measure–when the respondents returned the survey instrument–was at its lowest point going back at least to 1986, and the drop from a year earlier was unprecedented.

Salaries were stagnant at best. Those graduates who found full-time employment outside the field had a higher median annual salary than those who had work in the field. Even graduates who were lucky enough to find a job working for a web publishing company had an annual salary significantly below the annual salary of those who found similar jobs a year earlier. And the news in terms of benefits was even more discouraging. Across nine different comparisons, graduates in 2008 reported fewer benefits, and fewer of those were fully employer paid.

Graduates who found work were more likely to report they took their job because it was the only one available and less likely to say they were doing what they wanted to do. Job satisfaction was down, and regrets about the career chosen were up.

Maybe because the traditional industries didn’t offer them jobs, and maybe as yet one more indicant of the weak tie between the traditional media industries and their audiences, journalism and mass communication graduates in 2008 were less likely to read newspapers and magazines than graduates even a year before. They get their news from the Internet, and they frequently check social media web sites. Many are regular users of blogs and video sharing sites. And they are not very optimistic about the future of many of the traditional media or about job prospects in their field in the future.

Changes in the media landscape have raised serious questions about whether some of the media occupations are professions, that is, the province of people with special education and training, rather than jobs that are open equally to rank amateurs. There even is some question as to whether what was once an occupation that could produce a living–if only at a low standard–has now become only a hobby.

While the picture is dreary for journalism and mass communication graduates, with an unemployment rate for graduates of journalism and mass communication programs that is higher than for the 20 to 24 year-old cohort of which they are a part, there is evidence that some felt the pain more than others. And this difference may say much about the future of the journalism and mass communication occupations.

Those students who studied public relations at the university found the job market in 2008 to be considerably less hostile than did those who studied for print media job, for telecommunications jobs, or even for advertising jobs. Of the public relations graduates, nearly 71% had a full-time job when they returned the survey instrument, compared with 65% of the advertising graduates, 59% of the print journalism graduates, and 57% of the telecommunications graduates. The public relations students also earned above average salaries–something the graduates who took jobs in advertising, at dailies and weeklies, and with television (except for cable) could not say.

Public relations graduates are different from others in a key way. They don’t necessarily seek and find jobs in public relations. In fact, in 2008, only 17% of them took a job in traditional public relations, compared with 24% of the advertising students who went into advertising agencies and departments, 30% of the telecommunications students who went into that field, and 23% of the print journalism students who went into newspapers or wire services. Public relations students are more likely to say they are doing communications of some sort in jobs outside traditional employment circles than are any of the other students. In 2008, 38% of the public relations students said they found “communications” work that was not with a public relations department or agency, not with an advertising department or agency, not with a newspaper or wire service, and not with a telecommunications company.

The evidence is that the public relations students are more entrepreneurial, less tied to traditional definitions of what is communication work, and more flexible about what kinds of work they actually do. They did better in the job market in 2008, and that may say a lot about the future of employment for graduates of the nation’s journalism and mass communications programs.

For a more detailed report, visit: www.grady.uga.edu/annualsurveys