Will dig for food – The archaeological labour market in Europe

Abstract

“Most of you will never work in archaeology.” Many archaeology students face warnings like this when they start their degree. But what is the archaeological labour market really like? The results of the project “Discovering the Archaeologists of Europe 2012-14” (DISCO 2012-14), which was funded by the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Commission and was based on a previous study conducted in some European countries in 2008, can give answers to this question. During the second round of the project, data were collected in 2013 through surveys in 21 European countries, to answer basic questions regarding the labour market and the people employed in archaeology. Besides the age and gender ratio of the employees, data on the conditions of employment and the salary were collected. In addition, this article uses data from the job adverts added to the job resource database of the International Austrian Archaeology Forum (Internationales Österreichisches ArchäologieForum, IÖAF). These adverts give additional information on the demands placed on potential employees in job adverts. These data are used to examine the