STAFF REPORT
A recent survey, funded in part by the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation, brought recent graduates some good news regarding the journalism job market amid the turmoil in the traditional media industries and the large number of layoffs. Nearly all of the 2007 bachelor’s degree recipients who looked for work had at least one in-person job interview within six to eight months after graduation.
Why’s that so exciting? The job market in the second half of 2007 and the first half of 2008 remained largely unchanged from a year earlier, according to the study by the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. Not only did nearly the same percentage find full-time jobs as in the previous year, but salaries also remained static.
It’s not all sunny news, though, because the journalism and mass communication graduates mostly enter the labor market at the bottom. Therefore, turmoil at the top of the market isn’t likely to affect them immediately. And, the survey shows, the pattern of employment for journalism and mass communication graduates historically has reflected the pattern in the overall labor market.
The drearier facts released in the survey certainly aren’t weighing on recent graduates, though. Job satisfaction increased significantly in 2007 for those with full-time work, with 42.1 percent of those employed saying they were “very satisfied” with their job.
