English, Foreign Language Job Seekers Face Major Decline in Available Positions
By Kendra Hamilton
There were probably plenty of long faces at the annual convention for professors of English and foreign languages last month, as new data indicated the current crop of job seekers would face the toughest job market since the recession of the early 1990s.
Jobs in English declined 19 percent, from 983 in 2001 to 792 in 2002, while those in foreign languages fell 21 percent, from 675 to 535, according to the most comprehensive listing of available openings in those fields, the Modern Language Association’s October 2002 Job Information List.
