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. Read more