The job market recovery that began two years ago for graduates of U.S. journalism and mass communication programs seems to have stalled, according to findings released today by the University of Georgia’s James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research.

Data from the Cox Center's Annual Survey of Journalism and Mass Communication Graduates found that journalism and mass communication graduates in 2006 were no more likely to have a job offer when they finished their studies than graduates a year earlier and no more likely to have landed a full-time job by the end of October—approximately five months after leaving the university.

"Graduates of U.S. journalism and mass communication programs confronted a weakened job market in 2006 and early 2007 ," according to Lee B. Becker, director of the Cox Center and professor of journalism in UGA’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Becker has directed the Annual Survey of Journalism and Mass Communication Graduates since 1988. It is designed to monitor the employment rates and salaries of graduates of journalism and mass communication programs in the United States , including Puerto Rico .

Becker noted that the journalism and mass communication job market still lags behind what it was in 2000—the year that represents the most favorable market for graduates in the last 20 years. In the 2006 Annual Survey, the market remained largely unchanged for women from a year earlier, while for men the market was weaker. Students who are members of minority groups also had a harder time finding a job.

The percentage of 2006 journalism and mass communication bachelor’s degree recipients with at least one job offer on graduation was 76 percent, comparable to the figure of a year earlier. The percentage of master’s degree recipients with at least one job offer on graduation was 72 percent, also comparable to the previous year.

At the same time, salaries for graduates with full-time jobs did increase and even managed to outpace inflation just slightly. Benefits, however, showed a marked decline.

Only half of the journalism and mass communication bachelor’s degree recipients with a job in communication were working a 40-hour week. A quarter reported working between 41-50 hours per week.

More 2006 than 2005 graduates reported writing and editing for the Web as part of their work assignment with 40 percent of bachelor’s degree recipients reporting such responsibilities, Becker noted. The percentage of graduates reporting that they are designing and building Web pages also increased in 2006.

Complete 2006 figures for employment levels, benefits and salaries are available at www.grady.edu.edu/annualsurveys.

The Annual Survey of Journalism and Mass Communication Graduates has operated at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication since September 1997.

Established in 1915, the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication provides seven undergraduate majors including advertising, broadcast news, magazines, newspapers, public relations, publication management and telecommunication arts. The college offers two graduate degrees, and is home to the Knight Chair in Health and Medical Journalism and the Peabody Awards, considered the electronic broadcasting industry's most prestigious prize. For more information, visit www.grady.uga.edu.

For additional information on the James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research, visit www.grady.edu.edu/coxcenter.

To download the 2006 Graduate Survey with black and white charts, please click here.

To download the 2006 Graduate Survey with color charts, please click here

A summary chart showing where journalism and mass communication graduates find work when they complete their studies is included in the Newspaper Association of America web feature, The Source–Newspapers by the Numbers.

The chart shows that 8.6% of the 2005 journalism and mass communication bachelor’s degree recipients took work in the newspaper industry, compared with 8.0% in 2004 and 7.4% in 2003. The data are from the Annual Survey of Journalism and Mass Communication Graduates.

According to the NAA site, The Source offers a quick, but detailed look at newspapers. It is designed to provide easy access to the facts and statistics that define a changing industry.

Click here to go directly to the chart on where journalism and mass communication graduates in 2005 found work, and here to go to the home page for The Source.

Journalism and mass communication enrollments increased in the fall of 2005, but the 2005-2006 academic year was the second in a row in which rate of growth was modest. Growth in the size of the freshman class and the expectation of growth in enrollments generally suggest that enrollments in the field will continue to increase in coming years. The data also suggest that the field of journalism and mass communication is not keeping up with general trends in growth in graduate enrollments. An examination of faculty retirement projections suggests little disruption in the next 10 years, but more may lie beyond that period. Journalism and mass communication draws on two separate suppliers of faculty–the communication occupations and doctoral programs. Evidence is that this pattern will continue in the future.

The copyrighted full text of the 2005 Enrollment Report is available here, courtesy of Journalism & Mass Communication Educator.

Cox Center Releases 2005 Annual Survey Findings of Journalism and Mass Communication Graduates

Improvements in the job market continued in 2005 for journalism and mass communication graduates, according to findings just released by the Grady College's James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research.

Data from the Cox Center's Annual Survey of Journalism and Mass Communication Graduates found that 2005 journalism and mass communication bachelor's degree recipients were more likely to have at least one in-person job interview, had more job offers on graduation, and were more likely to actually land a full-time job than were 2004 graduates.

"Job prospects for journalism and mass communication graduates are up for the second straight year," said Lee B. Becker, director of the Cox Center and professor of journalism in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. "We saw improvement not only for bachelor's degree recipients but also for those who earned a master's degree from journalism and mass communication programs."

Job market improvements for 2005 journalism and mass communication graduates cut across all industry segments, however the market remains weaker for graduates specializing in telecommunications than for graduates in print journalism, public relations or advertising. Women enjoyed more success in the job market in 2005; minorities enjoyed less. "All of these findings are continuations of long-standing trends in the field," noted Becker.

Salaries increased for both the 2005 bachelor's and master's degree graduates. Inflation, however, took a heavy toll with bachelor's degree recipients in 2005 earning nearly the same amount in inflation-adjusted dollars as 1988 graduates.

Job satisfaction increased in 2005, both for those in full-time and part-time positions. "Graduates reported being satisfied with their jobs, with their employers, and with their decision to study journalism and mass communication in the first place," noted Becker.

To learn more about the 2005 Graduate Survey, please click here.

Undergraduate and graduate enrollments in the field of journalism and mass communication grew again in the autumn of 2004, but at rates considerably smaller than in recent years. Enrollment at the freshman level was considerably higher than a year earlier, however, suggesting increased enrollment demand at the undergraduate level for the future.

While the field of journalism and mass communication is heavily slanted toward undergraduate education, new analyses show that these undergraduate programs are mostly in university settings where graduate education is highly valued. Journalism and mass communication as a field clearly underperforms in terms of graduate
education.

Click here for the full text of the article.

Click here for the appendix to the 2004 Enrollment Report.

Enrollments in journalism and mass communication educational institutions and their influence on the culture of these organizations is the focus of an article recently published in Journalism and Mass Communication Educator written by Dr. Lee Becker, Cox Center director.

Click here for the full text of the article.

For the first time since 2000, the percentage of journalism and mass communication bachelor’s degree recipients who had at least one job offer on graduation increased over a year earlier, as did the average number of job offers graduates had. The percentage of graduates who looked for work but had no interviews or had only a telephone interview dropped in 2004 compared with 2003.

The level of unemployment for journalism and mass communication bachelor’s degree recipients declined, bringing them closer to their age cohort nationally than has been true any year since 2000.

The job market for those earning a master’s degree from the nation’s journalism and mass communication programs also improved in 2004 over 2003, though the improvement was less dramatic than for the bachelor’s degree recipients.

The gap between the employment level of bachelor’s degree recipients who are members of racial or ethnic minority groups and those who are not persisted in 2004, though the size of the gap was smaller than a year earlier. Minorities continued to have a more difficult time in the job market.

Salaries earned by journalism and mass communication bachelor’s degree recipients increased markedly in 2004, with the median standing at $27,800. In current dollars, the salary earned by the 2004 graduates is the highest ever received, surpassing the old top salary of $26,988 earned by 2000 graduates. The salary earned by master’s degree recipients in 2004 also improved, though just slightly.

To learn more about the 2004 Graduate Survey, please click here.

Enrollments at the nation’s journalism and mass communication programs increased in 2003, reaching unprecedented numbers at the bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral levels. All indications are that undergraduate enrollments at least will continue to grow, reflecting national trends. In fact, growth in enrollments of the sort experienced in recent years in the field most likely is necessary for journalism and mass communication to maintain its competitive position within the university. Though growth in resources does not appear to have kept pace with growth in enrollments, the field seems to have weathered the most recent economic downtown better than it did the downturn of a decade earlier—probably because of the growth in enrollments.

The copyrighted full text of the 2003 Enrollment Report is available here, courtesy of Journalism & Mass Communication Educator.

Graduates of journalism and mass communication programs in the United States had difficulty finding work in 2003 and 2004, and those who did find work received lower salaries and poorer benefits packages than did graduates a year earlier.

Despite the weak market, or maybe because of it, those journalism and mass communication graduates who found work were relatively satisfied with what they were doing and committed to the organizations that employed them.

These are some of the key findings of the Annual Surveys of Journalism & Mass Communication Graduates, housed in the James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research at the University of Georgia. The Cox Center is a unit of the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Cox Center Director Dr. Lee B. Becker and Assistant Director Dr. Tudor Vlad released the findings of the survey of journalism and mass communication graduates at the conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), meeting August 4-7 in Toronto, Canada.

Cox Center researchers also released the preliminary results of the Annual Surveys of Journalism & Mass Communication Enrollments, a companion survey to the graduate survey also conducted in the Cox Center. The survey found that the 463 journalism and mass communication programs around the country enrolled 204,268 students in the autumn of 2003, up 5% from a year earlier. The final report will be released in the autumn of 2004.

The research team also released the findings of a separate study of enrollments in doctoral programs in the broad field of communication, showing an increase in enrollments of 18% from a year earlier, and a study assessing the impact of a video message designed to increase enrollments of racial and ethnic minorities in those doctoral programs.

Click here for the report from the graduate survey.

Click here for the report on doctoral programs.

Click here for the report on the video recruiting message.

The Impact of Internal Labor Markets on
Newspaper Industry Diversification

The daily newspaper industry in the United States changed dramatically in the second half of the last century. The number of daily newspapers declined, the number of cities served by only one daily newspaper increased, and the number of newspapers not part of a newspaper group decreased. One potential outcome of creation of a newspaper group is expansion of what economists call the Internal Labor Market. If the newspaper group integrates or even coordinates the hiring of personnel, the Internal Labor Market could be expanded to cover all or major parts of the group. This creation of an expanded Internal Labor Market of the daily newspaper company should have significant consequences for the individual newspaper. It should, in the circumstances of an expanded Internal Labor Market cutting across different newspapers of differing sizes, be advantageous for individual papers to hire able talent, to invest in them through compensation, and to encourage their development through training. This paper tested this expectation in one specific area: the hiring of and investment in journalists. It found that daily newspapers that are part of an optimally configured extended Internal Labor Market are more likely to have minority journalists on their staff than are other newspapers.

Click here for the full text of the article (PDF 211KB).

Gender Equity Elusive, Surveys Show

Newsroom gender equity concerns are the focus of an article recently published by the Freedom Forum on its web site and written by Dr. Lee Becker, Cox Center director. The article is based upon findings from the Annual Surveys in Journalism and Mass Communication, conducted by the Cox Center at the University of Georgia, and from a separate survey conducted at Indiana University.

Click here for the full text of the article.

Click here for article on newspapers' recruiting message.

Enrollment Levels Increase Sharply

Results of the Annual Survey of Mass Communication and Journalism Enrollments recently published in the Journalism and Mass Communication Educator Autumn issue reveal pronounced growth. Enrollment at both graduate and undergraduate levels increased in the autumn of 2002, resulting in the largest number of students enrolled in journalism and mass communication programs ever. The growth in graduate enrollment follows a period of decline, while the increase in undergraduate enrollment continues a pattern of growth. The percentage of undergraduates enrolled who were female increased slightly, as did the percentage of students who were African American.

Click here for the full text of the article.

Survey Results Released in Kansas City, August 2003

Graduates of university journalism and mass communication programs around the country in 2002 had difficulty finding jobs in the field, much as graduates did a year earlier. The job market, quite strong as recently as 2000, remained very weak throughout the early months of 2003.

Salaries also stagnated, and job benefits remained stable only because graduates were paying for bigger portions of them on their own.

These are some of the key findings of the Annual Surveys of Journalism & Mass Communication Graduates, released August 1 at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications in Kansas City.

The Annual Surveys of Journalism & Mass Communication are conducted in the James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research, a unit of the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia.

In addition to the report of the graduate survey, Cox Center researchers released preliminary findings of the Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Enrollments, which showed an increase in enrollments in journalism programs around the country in the autumn of 2002.

Other reports released by the Cox Center researchers focused on the characteristics of journalism and mass communication faculty members and of students graduating from doctoral programs in the broad field of communication.

Predictors of Diversification of Journalism & Mass Communication Faculties 1989-1998

The percentage of faculty in journalism and mass communication programs who are women is increasing, but the change is so gradual that, at the present rate, it will be around the year 2035 before the faculty looks like the students enrolled in journalism and mass communication programs today in terms of gender. The situation is much the same in terms of race and ethnicity.

Yet, some journalism and mass communication programs have made strides in diversifying their faculties, both in terms of gender and race. What explains that variation? Why have some journalism and mass communication programs enjoyed more success than others in diversifying their faculties? This article examines three different factors that could explain the variability: the characteristics of the region in which the journalism program is located, the characteristics of the university that houses the program, and the characteristics of the journalism program itself.

In summary, the increase in the percentage of minority students, strong commitment of the unit leader, some level of support for diversification from the central administration, and hiring flexibility, etc. are all related to the increase of diversification of faculty. The characteristics of the program and university also have some impact on faculty diversification.

Copyright of this article is held by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

For a link to the PDF version of the full article, click here.