Good points you make. But, there are so many babyboomers that even if 3/4
stay on working, enough jobs are going to be able to open up. At the same time
there are new positions being created. I am a babyboomer btw, though at the tail
end.
I should have pointed out that most of the museum jobs I was referring to
and have applied to are at the state and federal level. My immediate supervisor
is set to retire in 2 years (she'll be 54). A friend of my who worked at a
state university (not a museum job) was offered a 'golden handshake' and
couldn't resist. She was 45 and started working there when she was 19.
At 80% of her salary and full bennies! - no need to look for
other work or plenty opportunity to start a new career. So not everyone is going
to have to depend on SS benefits, though many of us still will.
Everyday, I am online looking for museum work. I check about 10 different
websites daily. There ARE a lot of museum jobs. The 'new museology', a direct
result of the phenomena of post-nationalism, is truly amazing. We are at, or
close to the 'hey-day' for museums. Maintaining interest with the younger
generation is vital, and I think all of us are doing a great job with this.
Renewed patriotism in more recent times has been a great boost.
For a book pertaining to this subject I highly recommend: Zulaika,
Joseba. Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa. Museums, Architecture, and City Renewal.
Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, Reno 2003.
It is true that the low paying, volunteer, etc., work is soooo difficult
and hurts the SS earnings and quarters. I am VERY aware of SS earnings as two
years ago I had to go on SS Disability in order to have Medicare to pay for
eye surgery that I have had to put off for 15 years. I simply could not put this
off any longer.
As I mentioned before, many of the issues I have faced with securing
employment in a museum have been my own doing (or not doing). Being out of the
workforce for 2 years has hurt too. It kills me when I see people who are
applying for jobs that I am trying to get, that already have good jobs and they
are just simply doing lateral transfers, etc. But I can't be bitter over that
because they are certainly entitled, etc., and have their own circumstances. But
I did once find myself wanting to scream, 'Wait, look over here, hello
I am making nothing'.
Thanks to the internet, I can keep track of what's going on. For many of
these jobs I've applied for, I have gone onto the museum's website and
have found the names of the people who were hired for jobs I applied
for. Then I can do a search for their names and find out more information. I do
this to assist in my job search. So for one, the person's name came up so many
times in the search. Tons of newspaper articles and clearly, this person had
done a lot of wonderful work and was well qualified.
I'm not looking to see whether the person is well-qualified to see if I was
considered fairly or not, but I'm comparing their background to mine and I'm
looking to see what else I would need to be competitive. All the people I have
found so far who are getting these jobs, are not unemployed. And often I can
find what job they left, and as far as I can tell that they were
doing related (non-museum) work, and are moving into full-fledged
museum work (was interesting to note). But they do have related MA's and it
looks like they may have had to accept other types of related work (perhaps at
the time they were looking for museum work, there was nothing much
available).
Whenever I can find what position they have held
before, interestingly enough I discovered that the jobs these people
are leaving, are jobs that I do not qualify for and they are high-profiling,
good paying positions. So I do think this is really curious. But also,
this clearly indicates that you have a better chance of getting a job if you
already have a (paying) job.
One of the last jobs I applied for was a museum at a state university. I
searched the internet and found all the 2004 salaries (from professors
to maintenance workers) for every employee at that university. I found the
salary for the person that held the position that I was applying for.
Based on that (and in another search I determined that this person had
worked there for 8 years) I was able to figure a salary I could
negotiate for if I were offered the job. So I went up just a tad from the
starting salary for the position, but went lower than that of the
person vested 8 years. Once again, I never got to the point of salary
negotiations. I'll be ready though when the opportunity arises.
I was trying to stay 'calm' during my recent job searches but it hasn't
been easy to do so. Not only am I very anxious to get back to work in general,
but it looked like I wasn't going to be able to send my son to college this year
if I didn't get a job and quick. I'd have to say that this broke my heart like
never before. Of course I could foresee this occurrence years earlier and tried
to prevent the possibility, but to have it become a realization was something I
never felt before and really can't put into words.
Without any of these jobs materializing, I quickly got my
motherly instincts refocused and went right over to the college and calmly
asked for more financial aid for my son. Although I still have to pay a bit, I
managed an extra 10k! After the FA counselor made the offer, I broke down and
finally cried over all this.
Back to my point about my job search - I'm sure my anxiety and
desperation showed through during my interviews...I was sooo nervous. People who
are already in a job or otherwise not in a desperate situation have a far better
chance of getting these jobs. Often, they don't have the stress to be out of
work, may be going for a higher salary, etc., and simply give a 2-week
notice.
Now that I am calm and my son is entering college, I am focusing on what I
need to do to get a full-time, permanent museum job (not the volunteer, small
grant, possible seasonal funding which is down from possible full-time to,
'maybe' 3k). I have a whole different perspective now. If I have to volunteer
and/or do an internship to update my skills, I'll do it. Then I'll start
applying for museum work again (and keep trying to calm down already).
I know I am not the only one out there in this situation. And I will
certainly have to work beyond retirement age just to pay off my once dinky
student loan.
I have suffered through a lot. Five years of being a full-fledged
(waitressing,and working at a hospital too) shovel bum had left me with
everything from lumbar spinal stenosis to Lyme disease. I went several years
undiagnosed with the spine condition because not too many people in their 30's
get that. So now you know, Micki that I AM one of the
people you are referring to! I have experienced the occupational effects from
this work. But I'm all patched up and ready to go!
I have to disagree with you about doing volunteer work though. I have
faithfully volunteered for one museum for 10 years now. Every year - a used book
sale and X-Mas craft show fundraisers -I inventoried all their Indian artifacts,
among other projects.
Unfortunately, all volunteer work does is quite the opposite of what you
might think. It tells a potential employer that you are willing to work for free
(so why should they pay you 40k+ a year) and that you perhaps aren't 'good'
enough to do paid work.
If you are looking for museum work and want to volunteer your time, you are
far better off with a short-term internship, even if it's unpaid. The reason for
this is that potential employers know that an established internship usually
requires that the intern work under the supervision of a professional with
at least an MA.
In small, all-volunteer museums, you are less likely to work in a
state-of-the art, professional environment. There are exceptions, of course and
I have spent a lot of the last 10 years learning from a Museum Director (and
town historian) who has a Ph.D. She's in her 80's and retired. I do make sure I
properly use her title when I list her as a reference.
I volunteer for my own personal benefit (something productive) and those
who benefit from my much needed work. So on one hand, I may express my need to
volunteer in order to maintain my skills but I it is not the way to go for
museum employment.
And being a research junkie, I have studied volunteerism while I was a
VISTA volunteer and when I worked on my social services degree. While I was a
VISTA volunteer -is where I learned about grant writing and many other skills
that I have been able to apply to museum work. People volunteer for many
reasons, but it does not aid in an effort to
pursue professional work. It did get me a nice barrister bookcase that the
museum no longer needed.
Now you see that perhaps the reason I can't get the 'right' job is because
I am seriously a total research junkie, maniac employee that none of you out
there in their right mind would consider hiring (no sah, just kiddin' I'm not
that bad) . But I am taking a leap of faith with sharing my personal experiences
here to get some points across, and I would like to hope that my
name hasn't ended up alongside the word 'Delete' on your
keyboard! And besides, I know that many of you are also really totally serious
research junkies that are working like maniacs on dozens of projects!
Pam
In a message dated 8/22/2005 9:12:49 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
Oh dear, Pamela. You anticipate older baby
boomers on the brink of retirement to move out of their jobs? They, but
obviously not you, are all too keenly aware that Social Security moves further
and further from their grasp, now requiring people to work until they are
nearly 70. When Social Security does kick in, the payment does not begin to
replace earned income, due primarily to the part-time, low wage and
employed/not employed insecurity of museum work. Retirement plan? A great
idea, but not one that museums tend to think is worth the trouble. Nest egg?
When property taxes rise to skyscraper height, when aging brings not only the
comfort of a life much enjoyed but the expenses of medical crises--
replacement knees from carrying those heavy boxes of archives, for example,
and dealing with cancer or diabetes complications-- or the loss of spousal
retirement plans and retired employee health insurance, absence of domestic
partner recognition for benefits, the expense of helping your grown kids out
when they lose their high-tech jobs, then their unemployment and health
insurance, then their house... the nest empties its eggs pretty
rapidly.
No, all of these things have not happened
to me (yet), but I've seen all of them in the lives of colleagues all around
me, and I'm pretty sure I will be lying in a pine box before I can consider
quitting work. This phenomenon of hard to find jobs is not limited to
the museum or public history world, and not limited to recent
graduates or ambitious youth. Times have changed, big time,
and we are all caught in the world we created, one that pours money into
wasteful war, looks the other way at executive stealing, and tolerates a "me
and only me" attitude throughout every layer of society around the
world. We're not approaching an economic crisis, we are smack in the
middle of it, and losing more daily. I see money out there, cruelly used
in many cases and simply insensibly used in others. But I don't see it being
used to solve the acute economic problems we face at this moment.
However, I do agree with you on one
important point: it is indeed rare for a job to go to the best qualified
person. I think it is that "me and only me" phenomenon that puts incompetent
people in places of leadership and relative high income; people reward their
friends in return for something for themselves. It is cruel for those
with the power to hire and fire to withhold a job from someone who upsets the
status quo by working to her best capacity! And, it perpetuates both
this lopsided, unfair system of rewards and growing acceptance of
incompetence.
At this moment in time, I don't know what
to advise a young person seeking museum or public history work. The museums
are not all going to close, so there will be work there. There is
benefit in doing any kind of paid work (or volunteer for that matter, but
volunteering puts nothing on the dinner table); you learn the discipline of
working to someone else's line, you build a network. I've been surprised at
the growth of museum studies programs in recent years, and just as surprised
when I see how little the graduates have learned. I think there are as
many well qualified, competent grads as there have always been-- but because
there are more grads there are more average and below average grads, and fewer
non-profit museums too (but a huge increase in industry supported
ones).
Anyone have other thoughts? How can we
encourage good students, excellent teachers and competent grads, because
we do need them to carry museums into the future. Has there been a sea change
in museum expectations, favoring less competence, or favoring for-profit
sensibilities? Where are the models for dealing with a surplus of
graduates in such a specialized field? Does there need to be a big change in
the way Museum Studies and Public History are taught? Uh oh, where is Pogo
when we need him?
Micki Ryan
Museum & Archival
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