News

Journalism No Longer the Worst Job In America—Barely

Share this article

Journalism, which was ranked as the worst job in America last year, inched up a notch to finish at number 199, just ahead of lumberjack on CareerCast’s latest list of the top 200 best and worst jobs in the U.S. for 2014. By “worst jobs,” they are referring to employment opportunities.

This is a reversal of last year when lumberjack came in at 199, after finishing at number 200 in 2012.

Neither job has a very bright future, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimating that logging positions will drop by 9% by 2022, and reporters by 13%.

Logging has been hit by flagging demand for products, along with the switch to mechanization for many tasks that lumberjacks used to do, while the newspaper industry has been suffering from declining employment since the 2008 recession, as advertising revenue plunged and consumers dropped newspapers in favor of digital news reporting.

Photojournalists (186) and broadcasters (196) fared marginally better, but they all fell below such luxurious jobs as dishwasher (124), sewage plant operator (141) and meter reader (183).

The top job in the U.S. was mathematician, with tenured professors—who collect good salaries and are almost impossible to fire—finishing second.

Don Irvine
Donald Irvine is the chairman of of Accuracy in Academia (AIA), a non-profit research group reporting on bias in education. Irvine follows his father’s legacy, Reed Irvine, to critically analyze the liberal media’s bias and brings over thirty years of media analysis experience. He has published countless blog posts and articles on media bias, in context of current events, and he has been interviewed by many news media outlets during his professional career. He currently hosts a livestream weekly show on AIA’s Facebook page which discusses current events. Irvine graduated from the University of Maryland and rose up the ranks to become chairman of Accuracy in Media until his transition to AIA. He resides in the suburbs around the nation’s capital and is a proud father and grandfather.

Sign up for Updates & Newsletters.

Recent articles in News