The job market for journalism and mass communication graduates showed signs of continued improvement in 2012 and 2013, according to a report from University of Georgia (UGA) researchers. Those earning bachelor’s degrees from journalism and mass communication programs reported higher salaries than a year earlier, and the increase offset the impact of the relatively low inflation in the country.
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However, the improvements in the job market were not universal. Master’s degree recipients reported difficulty finding work and the same average salary as a year earlier. Increases in salaries for bachelor’s recipients were not large.
Bachelor’s degree recipients who found full-time work earned on average $32,000 in 2012, compared with $31,000 a year earlier. The increase offset the impact of inflation. Master’s degree recipients with full-time jobs earned $40,000 in 2012, the same as their counterparts in 2011.
UGA researchers reported that just fewer than three out of four of those earning bachelor’s degrees in journalism and mass communication in the spring of 2012 had at least one job upon graduation, comparable to what was true a year earlier.
By October 31, the benchmark date for comparison year-to-year, 56 percent of the bachelor’s degree recipients had a full-time job, up just slightly from 53 percent a year earlier, they said.
The rate of employment improved in the months after graduatio
n, they found, and 66 percent of the graduates reported holding a full-time job roughly 6 to 8 months after graduation.
Bachelor’s degree recipients were more likely to have found a job in the field of communication than a year earlier, with 60 percent of them so employed six to eight months after graduation.
The survey has operated from the James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research at the UGA’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. The complete Cox Center report is available at www.grady.uga.edu/annualsurveys/.