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.
All indicators of the health of the market in 2009 and early 2010 showed declines from a year earlier, which already had produced record low levels of employment. Salaries remained unchanged for the fourth consecutive year, meaning that graduates actually were receiving less money because of the effects of inflation. Benefit packages also continued to get skimpier.
These are the key findings from the Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Graduates, conducted each year in the James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research at the University of Georgia.