Georgia Study Shows Job Prospects Remain Bleak for 2003 Journalism Grads

ATHENS, Ga.
In a year of grim employment news, the prospects for graduates of journalism and mass communications programs remained slightly worse than the national average, according to the 2003 Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Graduates, conducted at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia.
The survey of 2,680 male and female bachelor's degree recipients of 100 journalism and mass communications programs across the country indicated that only 56 percent of them held a full-time job by Oct. 31, 2003, representing a slight drop from the year before and the lowest rate since 1994.
Generally most of the survey figures indicated no change or a slight worsening in 2003 from 2002 but a substantial decline from the mid-1990s. The survey's findings included a worse-than-average 13 percent unemployment rate for journalism and mass communications graduates from June 2003 to May 2004, compared to the national average of 10 percent for workers ages 20 to 24 and 6 percent for the entire labor force.
Communication salaries for bachelor's degree recipients remained flat at an average $26,000 in 2003. The extent of benefits offered graduates also remained low.
One fourth of the 2003 graduates said they regretted their career choice. Only one in five expects to retire in the field.
More hopeful findings indicated that two thirds of the 2003 graduates who found full-time work were proud of their employers. More than a third said they were very committed to their employers, and three in five said they consider their work to be meaningful. 
The Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Graduates, designed to monitor the employment rates and salaries of graduates in the field, has been conducted since 1997 in the James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research, a unit of the Grady College at UGA.
The complete findings of the survey were released this month at the meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in Toronto and will be posted on the Web site of the Annual Surveys at <www.grady.uga.edu/annualsurveys>.