My library district just posted a job announcement for another branch. The job description and hours are identical to mine now. However, the starting pay they are offering is also identical to what they pay me after a decade, down to the penny.
Librarians need to eat, too.
And eating is getting massively expensive.
Are my hours and experience worth so little? Maybe I want my hours back instead at this point.
Wow, that stings!
Do the new hires have masters degrees now?
My author friend, age 60+, says all the editing jobs go to 20- and 30-somethings.
And not because they work for lower wages.
They get paid MORE than those with decades of experience.
And let us not even get started on AI taking over...
As a book editor, I can vouch for that @carolkean.
I lost much work as a technical writer to outsourcing 20-odd years ago. Hard to compete with someone with an English degree from a US or British University who's living in SE Asia where $8/hour was considered good pay.
As an editor, I'm increasingly facing redundancy to both AI and younger editors using lots of AI to work faster but not necessarily better.
Even Microsoft Word's default autocorrect dislikes some proper punctuation. I'm even less sure AI knows what it is doing, particularly when constructing sentences above an 8th-grade level or in a technical field where specific terminology matters..
No, these jobs do not require an MLS degree.
Our budget has not been keeping pace with inflation for years. There was a study a few years ago to get us on track, but they still haven't completed the transition to account for tenure after 2 years of slow updates. I get it, we're funded by taxes, and that's bad for everyone, but we also provide a service our communities actually value.
Dang, that's harsh, Jacob! Sounds almost identical to something my wife experienced while working for Bank of America Corporate... the unspoken term for it is "managed attrition" in which long-time employees are demoralized into leaving, thereby saving the company from paying certain benefits that are lower for new hires. Although, they mostly wanted her gone for being really good at her job... and they didn't want to pay the substantial bonuses their system was allowing her to make...
Librarians need to eat, to. As do musicians. And artists. And arborists.
Whereas I'm not big into liberal claptrap, there is a growing sensation that more and more places are "hostile work environments."