Earlier this month CareerCast, a career guidance website, came out with a report rating the best and worst jobs for 2012. My colleague Jacquelyn Smith covered it here. Journalist came in fifth on the worst jobs list, just after oil rig worker and above waiter. CareerCast used data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau and trade associations, and measured five criteria: pay, outlook, work environment, stress and physical demands.
Journalism’s poor showing caused some buzz among reporters and editors. My colleague Jeff Bercovici wrote an inspired piece about why journalist is really the best job anyone could have. As Jeff says, journalists are always learning, we get paid to read a ton and meet interesting people, we travel, we’re often in the middle of exciting news events, and it’s our job to express ourselves.
Now some new information from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce makes the profession look a bit more appealing. In a study on college majors, unemployment and earnings, the authors looked at U.S. Census Bureau data from 2009-2010 for three groups, recent college graduates between the ages of 22 and 26, “experienced” college graduates between ages 30 and 54 and graduate degree holders with master’s degrees or higher, between the ages of 39 and 54. It also looked at Census Bureau salary data.
The good news for journalists: The unemployment rate for recent college grads was 7.7%, a half a point below the national rate of 8.2%. Given that Georgetown culled its data from 2009-2010, the journalists’ employment showing is even more impressive, since starting in May 2009 and stretching through 2010, the national unemployment rate was above 9%. For experienced college graduates who worked in journalism, the rate was 6% and for those with graduate degrees, the unemployment rate for journalists was just 3.8%.
Of course journalists don’t make a lot of money. Recent college grads averaged $32,000 according to the survey, while experienced grads earned $58,000 and those with graduate degrees, $66,000. Not fabulous.
Computer science has gotten a lot of attention as a college major with one of the best job prospects, but in the Georgetown study, it comes out as roughly equivalent to journalism. Recent graduates are unemployed at a rate of 7.8%, a tad higher than journalists, experienced college graduates at a rate of 5.6%, somewhat lower than journalists, and graduate degree holders, 3.8%, the same as journalists. Computer scientists make more than journalists, but not astronomically more. Recent grads averaged $50,000, experienced grads earned an average of $81,000 and graduate degree holders, $96,000.
How encouraging are the numbers from the Georgetown study? I’d say the journalism landscape has continued to shift in the last two years, since the data was gathered. On the other hand, 2009 and 2010 were two of the worse years in U.S. employment history. But many of us still have jobs and at least at Forbes, we don’t seem to be getting ready to go anywhere soon.
To those interested in journalism as a career, I’d say what my father, who covered the waterfront in San Francisco for a now-defunct newspaper, used to say: If you can’t be happy unless you’re a journalist, then by all means become one. It helps to be self-motivated, curious and confident, and today, if you are fluent in using social media, that is a huge plus.
