Indicator

Humanities-Related Employment

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This item was developed by the Humanities Indicators (HI) in an effort to move the field toward a consideration of the humanities enterprise’s economic footprint.

When the HI debuted in 2009, the concept of a science and engineering workforce was well-established, and National Science Board’s Science and Engineering Indicators had tracked the number and character of such workers for many years. This was not the case for the humanities. The humanities workforce was a novel idea, and there had been no systematic attempt to estimate its size and composition.

To address this lack, the HI—using a similar conceptual framework and many of the same data sources as the Science Board—sought to provide a rough estimate of the number of workers whose work is humanities-focused. The HI also attempted to estimate the number of jobs that were not in the humanities but attributable to the humanities enterprise (e.g., administrative positions in humanities institutions, library clerks, museum security, etc.).

The HI hopes to soon update this item, revisiting the assumptions and data sources that undergirded the original research effort to provide an accurate assessment of the size of the humanities workforce and the secondary employment that humanities institutions generate.

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Toward the end of the first decade of the 21st century, humanities-related employment amounted to approximately 3.86 million jobs, or 2.6% of all employment.1 (For an explanation of the way in which the HI arrived at these estimates, see the Note on Humanities Employment Data.)

Endnotes

  • 1 For the majority of occupations and sectors, data are for 2008. Data for the publishing sector are for 2007. For a small number of occupations, 2009 data were used. At the time this indicator was prepared, these were the most current data available. Total U.S. employment for 2008 was 150,931,700, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Employment Matrix.
Findings and Trends
Findings and Trends

Humanities Research and Teaching

(1,371,870; 36% of total humanities-related employment)

  • 726,641 primary (elementary and middle school) and secondary teachers, representing 19% of all such faculty, taught humanities subjects and skills. Approximately 360,000 of these taught at the primary level exclusively, almost 320,000 taught high school exclusively, and the remainder served students at both levels. In addition, the nation’s public and private schools employed 181,810 kindergarten teachers (excluding special education specialists), and an estimated 181,810 teaching assistants supporting precollegiate humanities teachers (based on the assumption that each kindergarten teacher is supported by at least one assistant).2
  • The United States had 166,070 postsecondary humanities faculty. The number of graduate research and teaching assistants in the humanities can be estimated only imprecisely because available data cannot be parsed by academic discipline. The HI estimates that 19,539 graduate research and teaching assistants were employed in the humanities.
  • Adult literacy, GED, and remedial education teaching jobs are included here, given their role in developing students’ core humanities skills (Indicator III-01a).

Humanities Occupations

(794,708; 21% of total humanities-related employment)

Humanities occupations are jobs (beyond research and teaching) that require humanities knowledge and/or humanistic skills or that support key elements of the nation’s humanities infrastructure. Such occupations include:

  • Archivists: 6,300
  • Audiovisual Collections Specialists (including those who prepare, plan, and operate audiovisual teaching aids for use in education or who record, catalog, and file audiovisual materials in libraries and museums as well as a variety of other institutions and enterprises): 6,800
  • Authors and Writers (nontechnical; news analysts, correspondents, and reporters are tallied separately): 151,700 (includes self-employed)
  • Editors (text): 129,600 (includes self-employed)
  • Historians (nonfaculty): 4,100
  • Humanities Museum Curators: 4,212 (includes self-employed/freelancers)
  • Humanities Museum Technicians and Conservators: 3,996
  • Interpreters and Translators: 50,900
  • Librarians: 159,900
  • Library Technicians: 120,600
  • News Analysts, Correspondents, and Reporters: 69,300
  • Technical Writers: 48,900
  • Tour Guides and Escorts: 38,400

Humanities Institutions

(1,199,182; 31% of total humanities-related employment)

The jobs described here involve the technical, administrative, customer service, and maintenance functions essential to the operation of key types of humanities institutions, including:

  • Archives and Libraries: 129,700
  • Colleges and Universities: 311,741
  • Humanities Museums: 128,823
  • Primary and Secondary Schools: 628,918

Book, Newspaper, and Periodical Publishing, excluding Internet-only Publishing1

(489,603; 13% of total humanities-related employment)

Endnotes

  • 2The HI treats kindergarten teachers as humanities teachers because the bulk of their time is spent laying the foundation for the development of children’s written and oral language skills.
  • 1Employment for Internet publishing could not be estimated because existing data sources include under the heading of “Internet publishing” a variety of business types—Internet gaming, discount coupon publishing, and so on—that are not humanities-related. According to the 2007 Economic Census, employment by firms engaged in Internet-only publishing constituted only a small proportion, approximately 7%, of all (nonsoftware) publishing.

III-01a: Humanities-Related Employment, 2007/2008/2009*

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Data Source and Other Information

* For the majority of occupations and sectors, data are for 2008. Data for the publishing sector are for 2007. For a small number of occupations, 2009 data were used. At the time this indicator was prepared, these were the most current data available. Percentages do not add to 100% due to rounding.

Source:

Employment Data

U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2007 Economic Census, https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census.html. Data Set: Sector 51, EC0751A1; Geographic Area Series; Summary Statistics for the United States, States, Metro and Micro Areas, Metro Divisions, Consolidated Cities, Counties, and Places, 2007. Data accessed via data.census.gov.

U.S. Bureau of the Census, American Community Survey, 2008, https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/. Special tabulations of labor force data were developed from the one-year 2008 Public Use Microdata Sample file.

U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment Statistics, May 2009, National Cross-Industry Estimates, https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm.

U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2010–2011 ed. (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2010).

U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, 2007–2008 Schools and Staffing Survey (restricted-use data files).

Other Data Used in Calculating Employment Estimates

Elizabeth E. Merritt and Philip M. Katz, eds., 2009 Museum Financial Information (Washington, DC: American Association of Museums, 2009).

National Research Council, Committee to Assess Research-Doctorate Programs, “A Data-Based Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States: Data Table in Excel (2010),” http://www.nap.edu/rdp/.

U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, Integrated Postsecondary Data System; accessed via the National Science Foundation’s online integrated science and engineering resources data system, WEBCASPAR.

About the Data

See the Note on Humanities Employment Data for a detailed description of the categories and data used for this indicator. For the purposes of this indicator, humanities-related employment encompasses:

  • humanities research and teaching;
  • humanities occupations; that is, jobs (beyond research and teaching) that require humanities knowledge (e.g., art museum curator) and/or humanistic skills (e.g., editor) or that support key elements of the nation’s humanities infrastructure;
  • the administrative, technical, and support jobs necessary to the operation of key types of humanistic institutions; and
  • employment in the publishing industry (beyond that included in humanities occupations), because this industry produces books and other texts 1) the consumption and interpretation of which are key humanistic competencies and 2) that are the major vehicles by which the fruits of humanistic scholarship are disseminated.
  • Unless otherwise noted, the estimates provided here include full- and part-time employment. For data on rates of unemployment among humanities graduates, see “The Employment Status of Humanities Majors.”
Related Indicators

For information on the occupations of those who majored in humanities disciplines in college, see “Occupations of College Graduates Who Majored in Humanities Disciplines,” “Occupations of College Humanities Majors Who Earned an Advanced Degree ,” “Earnings of Humanities Majors,” and “Job Satisfaction of Humanities Majors.”

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The Humanities Indicators and Departmental Survey have been made possible in part by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this website do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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