The struggling economy has mostly been geared towards those that are related to the financial world. With stock markets and companies crashing, the effects they have brought about have spilled over the overall economy; a domino effect that can still be felt now even though many analysts say that the worst is over. Even those working for the arts and humanities are affected harshly by the economic downturn. Job outlook is bleak especially with unemployment rates in the US still at the double-digit levels. With colleges and universities cutting back because of the recession, the job outlook for graduate students in language and literature is cloudier than ever before.

According to the Modern Language Association’s report and forecast on job listings released Thursday, university faculty positions will decrease by 37%, the largest drop ever since the group began monitoring its job listing in 1974. The estimate, based on a comparison between the number of work openings listed in October 2008 and October 2009, follows a 26% drop the year before.

“Students thinking of going to graduate school in English should understand that right now their chance of landing a job that provides them a livable wage are 50-60 percent,” comments Rosemary Feal, executive director of the M.L.A., one of the world’s largest associations of professors and scholars of literature and language.

Furthermore, the Association plans to fill in about 900 English literature and language positions this 2010, a 35% drop from the previous year. It also projects that an estimated 750 foreign-language jobs will be taken, a 39% drop from the year before. Typically, 1,000-2,000 positions have been advertised annually in each category.

Even worse is that the share of tenure-track work vacancies available has been getting smaller. Tenure-track posts for assistant professors made up 53% of the English jobs advertised and 48.5% of those in foreign languages. The reason given by the Association behind this is that having too many part-time teachers diminishes the overall quality of teaching and learning.