Published: November 10, 2017 by Kate M. Spaulding

“Recent graduates are experiencing faster placements and earning more money than last year’s” is the big take away from Library Journal’s Placements and Salaries: 2017.

“Recent graduates are experiencing faster placements and earning more money than last year’s” is the big take away from Library Journal’s Placements and Salaries: 2017. Each year, LJ surveys ALA-accredited library and information science schools, analyzes the results, and publishes the data. There has not always been great news like this year, but there’s always some interesting tidbits. Here are a few of the stats that jumped out at me:

1. 83% of 2016 graduates report being employed full-time. That sounds good to me! It’s a little bit up from last year, and most of those are permanent, rather than temporary positions. The U.S. Department of Labor is optimistic as well; a new report projects that the outlook for library jobs is improving, with growth of 9% expected for 2016-2026. 
2. About 20% of full-time employed graduates work outside of a library setting. That says to me that more of our colleagues are finding jobs in niches like data science, marketing, digital asset management (DAM), or competitive intelligence. For more about that kind of work, I recommend investigating SLA (Special Libraries Association) and our iSchool student group, the special libraries career pathway, and browsing the Career Blog, of course. I’ve covered a lot of specialized careers!
3. The average full-time salary for employed 2016 graduates is up 7.45% over 2015. w00t! Fingers crossed that trend continues! However, troublingly, “the overall average salary level for male graduates is 18.3% higher than for female graduates” (source). Yikes. LIS World, let’s do better.
4. Wondering where job growth might occur? Respondents listed the following as “emerging areas” (via):
   1. Those related to digital collections and curation, including digital content/asset management, creating and maintaining digital institutional repositories, and electronic resource management
   2. Scholarly communication positions, especially involving open access
   3. Data curation and services, including data support for scholarship, data visualization, and GIS (geographic information systems)
   4. Web-related positions, focusing on UX/usability testing, social media, or blog management
   5. New technology services, such as virtual reality and 3-D printing.

Honestly, there is a huge amount of data and analysis in Library Journal’s report. What jumps out at you? Anything give you pause?