LAWRENCE, Kansas
When Lilli Lackey started college, talk of a growing teacher shortage gave her confidence that a job would be waiting for her when she got out.
Now, six months after graduating, she considers herself lucky just to find work as a substitute.
Across the country, droves of people like Lackey are unable to find teaching jobs, in large part because the economy is forcing school systems to slash positions. The teacher shortage that many feared just a few years ago has turned into a teacher glut.
“I always thought that, if I didn’t find a job, I would be able to sub. And then once that started to be more difficult, it was really kind of devastating,” Lackey, an art teacher, said during a career fair for educators at the University of Kansas.
Since last fall, school systems, state education agencies, technical schools and colleges have shed about 125,000 jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
At the same time, many teachers who had planned to retire or switch jobs are staying on because of the recession, and many people who have been laid off in other fields are trying to carve out second careers as teachers or applying to work as substitutes to make ends meet.
In Texas, the Round Rock school district had more than 5,000 applications for 322 teacher openings this year and saw its pool of subs almost double to 1,200, about 2.5 times as many as it needs even on a particularly bad day during flu season, said spokeswoman Joylynn Occhiuzzi.
