News media are losing jobs; but Ad Age says marketing broke an employment record in November

If you’re in the news business maybe you ought to slide over into marketing.

An analysis of federal jobs statistics by Advertising Age magazine says media jobs — newspapers, broadcast and cable TV, radio, magazines and internet media companies –“fell to a 15-year low (886,900), slammed by the slumping newspaper industry. But employment in advertising/marketing-services — agencies and other firms that provide marketing and communications services to marketers — broke a record in November (769,000).”

Here are a couple of excerpts from the February 18 article by Bradley Johnson.

Marketing thrives:

“Among all the ad-related job sectors, the hot spot is marketing consulting. Employment in that field in December reached a record 148,500, accounting for the lion’s share of job gains over the past year in advertising and marketing services.”

News writhes:

“Since media employment peaked in dot-com-infused 2000, media companies have eliminated one in six jobs (167,600) . . . The only media sectors to add jobs: magazines (up a meager 400 jobs) and internet media companies (up 9,200) . . . The big problem is newspapers, which account for half (82,800) of media jobs lost since 2000. One in four newspaper jobs have disappeared since newspaper employment peaked in 1990 . . . Newspapers, saddled with heavy costs of printing and distribution, last year accounted for 38% of U.S. media jobs, down from 50% in 1990.”

To drill down further into the current numbers, Johnson and AdAge presented a separate page of charts showing 2006 to 2007 job movements for each of the job categories inside of communications – jobs in all news media plus advertising and marketing.