Career Switchers Face Dwindling Job Supply

The AP (9/26) relates the story of a South Carolina woman with "a degree in early childhood education and tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to repay, but no teaching job," noting that the decades-long trend of high teacher demand has fallen victim to the recession, which has "upended the conventional wisdom that a teaching job is a golden ticket to career stability." Meanwhile, "a national survey of school districts in June by the Center on Education Policy estimated that 48 percent of them cut teaching jobs last school year." The AP notes that this trend of increased job scarcity applies to recent graduates as well as career switchers, "because of school district rules that require administrators to lay off the most recently hired teachers first, meaning some graduates lucky enough to find a job are out of work within a year."