Librarian "unpopular" job

[eleneariel]

From cnn.com's "Five of the most unpopular jobs"

Librarian
Studies have shown that librarians are expected to exit the profession en masse in coming years. The American Library Association Website quotes statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau indicating that more than one-quarter of all librarians will reach the age of 65 by 2009. A study published in the Library Journal found that 40 percent of library directors would retire by that same year.

In addition to the librarians expected to retire within the next decade, interest in the profession is waning among younger workers, according to the BLS. The situation is particularly dire for colleges and universities, which report the greatest difficulty in hiring librarians due to lower pay.

Graduates of library programs in 2004 reported an average starting salary of more than $39,000, an increase of nearly 3 percent over the previous year. The median salary for librarians is nearly $47,000, according to the BLS.


Huh.

Comments

[equuschick.livejournal.com]

Of course interest in library science is "waning" among younger workers, we're not teaching those younger workers how to read.

[melyndie.livejournal.com]

I admit I'm one of these statistics. I've always been interested in the library, but the pay! Agh. Even if you get that graduate degree and can be more than a book-checker-outer person, the money is just not there.

[lilia2000.livejournal.com]

Thats terrible! Even though I'm not a librarian, I do work in a library and I think it would be a fun job! (just currently not for me) and the library I'm at now has a lot of younger people working at it. I really hope this statistic changes!

[ransomedsea.livejournal.com]

You know, I actually read that being a librarian may be one of the best jobs to have in the very near future. The only drawback, the article said, was that computers are taking over a lot of the work.

The reasoning for going into the librarian field was much the same as this article: that the current generation of librarians is mostly older and near retirement age and the want will be strong and the supply lacking, as most people never even consider it. I think they don't consider it because half the population hasn't even ever been to the library, either from not needing to or not wanting to. And those who have considered the profession probably think it as dead-end and soon-to-be unnecessary.

It's a sad state of affairs, so it is.