LJ's 2009 Placements & Salaries Survey Shows Tough Library Job Market
As LJ's just released 2009 Placements & Salaries Survey shows, the tough economy is playing out in LIS hiring as well.
-- Library Journal, 10/16/2009
As LJ's just released 2009 Placements & Salaries Survey shows, the tough economy is playing out in LIS hiring as well. Even before the general economy's bloodletting of 2009, 2
008 graduates were hit hard. Job searches for 2008 graduates averaged almost five months, and unemployment postgraduation rose. Average starting salaries dipped slightly overall, dropping 1.8% to $41,579, after 18 years of increases. Placements in part-time and nonprofessional positions rose. Pockets of good news fill out the picture. Among them, LIS graduates reporting minority status continued to experience positive salary growth; graduates finding positions in the Northeast negotiated better than average salaries; and academic libraries continued to experience growth in full-time numbers, though salaries held steady.
Graduates, including Kristin Centanni, a 2008 graduate of the School of Library and Information Science (SLIS) at Indiana University (IU), Bloomington, featured on LJ's cover, had the best success when they started looking for work early. Other graduates reported a variety of perspectives on the job search as well.
Perhaps most worrisome, however, is that the 2009 survey of 2008 graduates appears to be the precursor to what will undoubtedly be a seriously depressed job market for 2009 graduates now coping with widespread hiring freezes and budget cuts across all types of libraries and information agencies.
