The proportion of journalists aged 29 and under has fallen from 21% to 12% in the past two years, according to the latest figures on diversity in journalism from the NCTJ.
This compares to those aged 29 and under making up 22% of the overall UK workforce last year.
The NCTJ Diversity in Journalism report uses quarterly Labour Force Survey data averaged over four quarters and weighted to 2020 population estimates. The findings have to be treated with a degree of caution given changing research methods and the fact that journalists represent a small subset of the data.
The report was not produced last year due to concerns over the accuracy of the Labour Force Survey data for 2023 amid falling response rates. The survey is filled out by 25,000 households (55,000 individuals) in the UK each quarter.
Compared to the overall working population, journalists aged 30-39 are overrepresented (30% of journalists, versus 24% of everyone in work). So are those aged 50 and over (39% of journalists, versus 33% of workers).
The NCTJ report said the fall in the proportion of younger journalists “would be consistent with falling employment levels and recruitment into journalism as people already in work get older and there is not an influx of younger new entrants”.
The proportion of UK journalists who are aged 40-49 has also dropped, from 27% of the profession in 2016 to 21% in 2022 and 19% last year.
Reach journalists leaving the publisher in its latest round of cuts appear to be a mix of ages, with some having spent 20 years at the company and others around one year.
At least 3,875 redundancies were made at UK and US journalism businesses in 2024, down from at least 8,000 in 2023.
Some 86% of journalists come from white ethnic groups, higher than the UK workforce overall (83%), the survey data suggests.
The proportion of white journalists has decreased over the past ten years (peaking at 94% in 2018) but appears to have stabilised over the past three datasets.
There is a higher proportion of women journalists (53%) compared to the overall working population (49%).
Among those with “editor” roles, women make up 47%. There is a bigger proportion of women in “journalist and reporter” roles (55%).
Journalists remain much more likely to have had parents working in higher-level occupations (61% of journalists versus 43% of the working population) although this is the lowest in several years. In 2021 the data said 80% had parents with higher-level occupations.
NCTJ chief executive Joanne Forbes said the industry is “not there yet” on representing wider society and that there are “no easy answers to the question of how to attract and retain talented people from disadvantaged or underrepresented groups, nor to how we can change deep-rooted cultural and structural barriers within the industry”.
A slightly lower proportion (17%) of people reported having a work-limiting health problem or disability compared to the general working population (20%).
This was the first dip after years of steady increases (10% of journalists had health problems or disabilities in 2016, 15% in 2018, 16% in 2020, 19% in 2021 and 22% in 2022).
Updated data has not been produced on LGBTQ+ representation in journalism. In 2023 it was reported for the first time that 89% of journalists identified as heterosexual versus 96% of the general population.
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