I don’t know that you can consider b-roll.net an industry metric, but we are seeing a few more job listings submitted recently. About a year ago, when the economy was at rock bottom, we would go 2 or 3 months without a new listing. Now we have a decent sampling – with more added each week.
Check out our listings at: http://b-roll.net/jobs/
Are companies expanding staffs? Or are they just filling in positions that have been left vacant for months? What does this say about the industry?
The job market sucks right now for photographers. Just last year I was looking for jobs, and literally a week after I sent out resume videos, I received calls. I turned the jobs down for personal reasons, but now I am looking a year later. The differences between last year and this year are drastic. It’s taken me almost three months to hear back from ANYONE–and that was because I finally resorted to “bugging” people out of frustration.
But that’s what it takes just for them to even look at your material anymore. You basically have to get in their faces and say, “hey, look at me!”. It doesn’t matter how good of a photojournalist you are–AP Award Winning, NPPA Award winning–it doesn’t matter. Unless you have connections or contact the right people, there’s a good chance your resume will end up in the pile.
A large part of this is obviously the recession. Everyone is going one-man band to save a few bucks, and they could care less how much quality of the product gets lost in the translation. There are some one-man bands out there who are AMAZING, but it’s very typical for the quality of any aspect of the story (video, sound, writing, etc) to diminish because you have ONE person focusing on everything at once. Let’s hope the market turns around…it seems any of us who have jobs right now are very lucky to have them.
Very true JP! I have been hustling like crazy just to get a call back! Being that I am looking for an entry level position as a photojournalist, it is near impossible as well. I recently just completed an internship in a under 50 market and still won’t land me an entry level job for 8 bucks an hour. News photojournalism is a dying art and the loss of quality shows greatly when I watch the news. Very sad times we live in, and doubtful that a focus on visual storytelling will improve even if the economy goes gangbusters again. The audience does not realize how lucky they are to have experienced photographers at news stations right now, because in 5-10 years its going to really show as either the good photographers become too jaded to care, or just visual storytelling with style and sequencing simply becomes unknown.