Newspapers Suffer Steep Decline in Newsroom Employment

The past decade has been a tough one for staff in U.S. newsrooms. A Pew Research Center analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data has found that staff levels in U.S. newsrooms fell from 114,000 in 2008 to 86,000 in 2018. The downward trend has been driven by steady job losses in newspaper newsrooms where employment fell 46 percent over the last ten years. In 2008, newspaper newsrooms had a workforce of 71,000 and that had fallen to just 38,000 by 2018.

Traditional radio is also enduring difficult times amid a boom in audio streaming. Employment in radio newsrooms fell from 5,000 to 3,000 between 2008 and 2018, a 40 percent drop. The situation remained stagnant in TV broadcasting newsrooms where employment went up by 1,000 during the same period as well as in cable TV news where the figure remained unchanged. The only notable growth was recorded in the digital-native sector where newsroom staff levels went up 79 percent from 7,000 to 13,000.