I have every sympathy with those having such difficulties in getting an
opening - and perhaps even more about the gross exploitation of many of
those who do manage to get an "entry" job in terms of salaries.  It is
very revealing that nowadays hardly any job ads in "Aviso" give any
indication of salaries.  Presumably most of the advertisers are either
deeply ashamed or - even worse - trying to pick up someone absolutely
desperate for a job who has a private income (or a well-paid spouse or
partner) that they can subsidise the museum.

In the UK the equivalent Museums Association advertising outlet - Museums
Journal - will not print adverts offering a salary under the equivalent of
about $21,000 per year for someone with a museum studies master's or
postgraduate diploma plus 2/3 years experience (the UK Associateship
level).

Nevertheless the explosion in pre-entry level museum studies programmes
over the past 9 years (since the government switched to a market-led
economy across every university) is producing a massive over-production of
museum studies and related postgraduates in the UK. The annual production
is certainly many times the perhaps 50 to 60 graduate level "entry"
jobs of every kind (conservation, education, general, financial and
operational management etc. - not just curatorial) that the country's 800
or so professionally staffed museums can offer in a typical year, so the
situation is deteriorating markedly - especially since at the same time
most museum budgets and staff numbers are being cut year after year.

However, opportunities are even worse in some other European countries.
In Italy, for example, virtually all professional museum and heritage jobs
are in the government service, with entry solely through a very tough
battery of written and oral exams.  Preparation for this can easily
involve 5 to 7 years of university studies followed by years of
volunteering or collections- or field archaeology-based research or
temporary work - before you can even apply to take the entry "Concorso"
(state competition).  However, in this country of 57 million population,
holding what its culture ministers continually boast is "more than a third
of the world's heritage" has cancelled the supposedly annual "Concorso"
EVERY years since 1983 (yes - eighty-three - not a typing mistake).  In
other words there has not been a SINGLE "entry level" opening for 15
years.

Things are rather better in France - where there is a similar system of
competition (Concours) taken after a similar period of university and
private study and either volunteering or collections-based research etc.
However, in recent years the number of places for museum entry has fallen
to a low point of only TWO (with around 800 people applying to enter
the completion every year), though in the current year thanks to successful
lobbying of the Minister there are (as I recall it) around 15 places
across the national museums, local authority museums and those of the City
of Paris.

Patrick