Wednesday, October 22, 2008

barely employed

Since graduating in April with a master's degree in Information (I'll leave it to you to decide what capital-Information could possibly mean), I've been looking for a job in one of the worst job markets in the country. I've been very successful - going on 6 months!

I had been in correspondence with a local museum that I really wanted to work for, doing grantwriting and evaluation. They wanted to hire me, and had finally managed to make room in the budget for me, when the economic crisis hit and their budget when on freeze.

So, being the determined and self-sacrificing person that I am, I went in to the museum this week and offered to do the same thing, but for free.

I'll be "working" about 20 hours a week, 5 of which will be paid front desk time, at $7.40/hr. That averages out to $1.80/hr in wages. For comparison's sake, I used data from the 2007 MSI Employment Report to create this graph showing my starting salary along with averages of other graduates across different industries.



Gee. With all this cash flow, I think I'll finally go buy new socks.

3 comments:

Dawn said...

You are not alone my friend. I have an interview now for a library aide, no Library degree required, but at least it would be in a library. 20 hours a week. Low salary...good thing we spent all that money to go to grad school! :)

Dawn said...

PS. My husband points out that at the $1.00 pay rate you are making more than I am.

Jen said...

we're having crazy library stuff going on too. a few weeks ago the administration came around and asked each department to identify one position (making it clear that they didn't mean person) to eliminate.

The last time we hired someone in our department there were 30something applicants compared to the usual five. dang economy

Just think, you're getting paid to do some networking.

Oh, did I tell you I got a new job? I'm now working in the digital department as the "digital initiatives assistant". It should be pretty cool, we scan lots of that fun special collections stuff.