This month’s American Libraries (page 16) has a short report on a census and retirement analysis by the ALA Office for Research and Statistics:
We will begin to see a surplus of graduates to retirees in 2019, but it may take until 2023 before we fully recover from the deficit years…. we could see a recovery period as long as eight years.
So by 2027, at the latest, there should be a good job market for librarians, according to the report.
Rosy outlooks for MLS grads — often by propagated library associations and schools — have become something of a joke the past few years. But do even these revised outlooks take all of the relevant factors in to account?
Good Market in 2027?
Oh my. Hmm. I would be 46 then. By then I think I would have given up on being patient and went into something else?
maybe I’ll find a good job before retirement
I interpreted this report differently–by 2019 the job market (for library employees) should be improving, because there will be a surplus of retirements compared to graduates. So, in the employer’s view, it will be a negative/deficit to “recover” from because there may be a shortage of librarians for a few years.
Once this happens in 2019, maybe I’ll finally be able to find a management position before I retire 🙂
I’ll have put in my 20 by then
I’ll most certainly be retired by then. I guess this is good news for toddlers who have expressed a desire to get an MLS.
The ALA is full of such crap.
The situation across the pond
It’s interesting that stateside LIS schools are filling their students with the same worthy nonsense that I have been subjected to during term 04/05. Irish 3rd level libraries reject applications from LIS grads for library assistant roles while the Irish public library service accepts applications regardless of professional qualifications for this grade. I was recently told that Trinity College Dublin rarely promotes library assistants to assistant librarian positions and that applying for an assistant librarian role would not help my career path. Fair enough, I say. I’m a forty year old who has switched career from ICT management into librarianship and want the last two years of post-graduate work to stand to me in terms of a professional step up. But please Department of Library and Information Studies, University College Dublin don’t bullshit any of this years intake that the HDLIS or MLIS will open doors. If you are on secondment from the Irish public library service you are lucky. You have a job to go to at the end of the year and prospects of promotion enhanced. Anyone else is going to have a rude awakening. That said the situation in the UK seems a little better. The immigrant boat awaits once more!
Location Location Location
If you want to find a good or better library job in the town or city where you live, then you are dramatically restricting your potential employers. It’s not that there are no good library jobs, it’s that librarians seem to expect the jobs to come to them. Maybe the librarian has to go to the hiring library, even if it’s in another city or state.
Here’s a question – do graduates of library schools tend to remain in the cities where they attended school? If so, wouldn’t that mean that there is a surplus of librarians in these areas while a shortage of librarians in areas that lack an accredited library school?
I make this point because many of my classmates do not intend to move after graduation.
Re:The situation across the pond
At least the LAI has not been telling us for the last two decades that there is a shortage of professional librarians.
I’ve made application to TCD, Dublin and County Cork when openings are announced and I still wait.
Re:Location Location Location
I agree. Also, the librarians that retire are going to create promotional opportunities which will eventually trickle down to entry-level positions.
People are not able to find jobs PARTLY because they are not where the jobs are. Although from discussions that I’ve read, it seems that some systems expect too much experience from entry-level applicants.
I was able to get a job in LA County by August after graduating in June. LA County Public Library had a number of entry-level librarian openings then, and they have even more right now.