Teachers Now Getting The Pink Slips
The myth of the recession-proof job continues to be exposed. Police officers, firefighters— now teachers.
From the Wall Street Journal’s Alex Frangos today:
In a sign of how severe the employment downturn is getting, even schoolteachers, an occupation once viewed as recession proof, are feeling the pain.
Education jobs grew steadily in recent years amid rising enrollment and government efforts to reduce class sizes. Now the increase in teaching positions has leveled off as school districts struggle with budget pressures. The demographic bulge caused by children of baby boomers — the so-called echo boom — has also begun to wane.
Los Angeles Unified School District laid off 2,500 teachers this spring. Broward County, Fla., Ms. Frommer’s district, cut 400 school jobs. Rochester, N.Y., laid off 300 teachers.
Other districts have avoided cuts by negotiating pay reductions and enacting furloughs and hiring freezes. In June, education jobs actually ticked up 0.5% nationally to just under 3.1 million on a seasonally adjusted basis. But the number of education-related jobs has declined in six of the past 12 months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That contrasts with annual growth of about 3% over the past 15 years in the education field. In the past year, education jobs have grown at about half that rate. Most in demand are teachers in math, science and special education. College instructors have also been in high demand.
Many of the layoffs came in June as teachers prepared to say goodbye to their students for summer. Union and state rules require schools to give teachers notice before the end of the school year if their jobs won’t be there in the fall.
Frangos added that younger instructors have been the ones getting most of the pink slips:
Because contracts often require that those with the least seniority be laid off first, the brunt of lost jobs has been borne by younger teachers.
Think the news of school layoffs are deterring young adults from trying to enter the teaching field? Think again. Frangos noted:
Despite headlines about teacher layoffs, more young people are going back to school to obtain their teaching certificates.
I wish aspiring teachers the best of luck, as it sounds like they’ll need it.
Source:
“Even ‘Recession Proof’ Schoolteachers Feel Pinch of Employment Downturn”
Alex Frangos
Wall Street Journal, July 3, 2009
July 3rd, 2009 at 11:30 pm
This is pretty bad news for teachers but it will only get worse. So many states are having huge budget problems and they will cut back on teachers and have larger class sizes. In addition to the states mentioned, Washington state has had big layoffs (in the thousands) and Arizona also has had many.
July 4th, 2009 at 10:00 am
Thanks for the comment credit.
July 7th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Quote from one famous teacher:
“I touch the future. I teach!”
- Christa McAuliffe
Anybody here remember her?
July 8th, 2009 at 9:01 am
Thanks for that quote Mammoth.
“Christa McAuliffe… Anybody here remember her?”
What a tragedy. Like a lot of other students that day, I was watching the Challenger flight from a classroom. Some time after the explosion, a talking head was enthusiastically saying there were reports of parachutes in the area (first inkling the press could be so full of crap?). Everyone around me seemed to perk up, thinking that, some how, the astronauts had managed to escape the shuttle. Kind of had my own doubts, considering the forces invovled in the explosion and the laws of physics working against the crew. Sad.