Journalism and mass comm grads still getting jobs

The Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Graduates from the University of Georgia is out and the news may be better than expected considering all the reports of layoffs and cutbacks in newsrooms recently.

Here are some highlights from the report:

Nearly the same percentage of graduates in 2007 found full-time jobs within six to eight months of graduation as in the previous year, and salaries remained static, the UGA researchers reported.

Nearly all of the 2007 bachelor’s degree recipients who looked for work had at least one in-person job interview in the six to eight months after graduation, the survey found.

On October 31, 2007, 63.3 percent of the bachelor’s degree recipients had a full-time job, a figure nearly identical to what the 2006 graduates reported.

The study found that, as in past years, women had more success in the job market in 2007 than did men, and minority graduates were less likely to land a job generally and to find a job in the field of communication than were non-minority graduates.

As for salaries, the median salary was basically unchanged from last year.  However, TV news salaries appeared to have made some interesting gains, going from the bottom of the list to somewhere in the middle.  Here’s a breakdown with 2006 salaries in parentheses.

• WWW – $37,400 ($31,500)
• Television – $29,300 ($24,400)
• Daily newspapers – $28,000 ($27,000)
• Radio – $25,000 ($27,000)

One other item from the report:

Job satisfaction increased significantly in 2007 for those with full-time work, with 42.1% of those so employed saying they were “very satisfied” with their job. The figure has never been higher back through 1987.