The vacancy rate for library positions is now 58% higher than FY2014 which not a reflection of a rapidly expanding business segment. Graduation rates of approximately 8,200 per year is far fewer than the annual 25,000 job postings for open roles - and although not all are entry level roles, this is a significant gap. At the same time, approximately 30% of current librarians will be eligible for retirement over the next few years. The impact of budget constraints is an additional structural issue which I discussed in an earlier post.
As if those structural staffing issues are not enough, the profession is simultaneously managing the most aggressive censorship crisis ever seen. Book challenge volumes have grown more than 1,200% over ten years, driven by coordinated campaigns operating across school and public library systems simultaneously. The admin burden alone is daunting but in many instances librarians have also been subject to personal and professional attacks simply for doing their job. This is a lot for any profession to carry.
Key Data — Workforce, Technology & Intellectual Freedom
+1,264% Growth in documented book challenges, FY2014–FY2023 (311 → 4,240 per ALA OIF)
33.2% Share of library workforce age 55 or older in FY2023, significantly above the 22–24% U.S. workforce average
3:1 Library job postings to MLS graduate supply ratio — the direct cause of the record vacancy proxy index
The library profession must manage in this environment while also navigating ILS market consolidation, DEI workforce gaps, and the largest shift in program delivery in its modern history.
Staffing: Flat Totals, Deep Structural Tension
Public librarian FTEs held steady over the decade — 46,200 in FY2014, 45,000 in FY2023, with a COVID trough of approximately 41,500 in FY2020. In contrast, academic librarian FTEs are down almost 9% from 27,500 in FY2014, to 25,200 in FY2023. Academic library staffing is structurally declining — not fluctuating around a stable mean, but moving downward as collections costs crowd out personnel budgets, as described in Post 4.
The vacancy index for academics over the ten year period has shown a similar trend as in public libraries with approximately 58% fewer filled roles since 2014. This is not a temporary shock. It reflects a decade of under investment in MLS pipeline capacity at a moment when demand for library professionals is expanding (if only based on the track of retirements).
Workforce Demographics: Progress That Isn’t Fast Enough
The library profession is 82.5% female — up from 80.2% in FY2014 — and 82.5% white — down from 87.2%, which does represent some progress on BIPOC representation. BIPOC professionals now make up 17.5% of the library workforce, up from 12.8%. That represents improvement over the decade reflecting sustained intentional effort by library schools, state library agencies, and organizations like the ALA Office for Diversity and the REFORMA and BCALA membership associations.
The U.S. workforce average BIPOC representation is approximately 23% which means the library profession is still nearly 6 percentage points below workforce parity, serving communities that are increasingly diverse. In many major urban library systems, the patron population is majority non-white while the professional staff population remains majority white. That gap has real implications for community trust, program relevance, and the library’s ability to serve all of its community effectively.
The library profession is aging faster than the workforce generally, which means the retirement wave that is already beginning will be larger and faster than aggregate retirements in most comparable professional sectors. Currently, 33.2% of the library workforce is age 55 or older in FY2023, up from 28.2% in FY2014 and if the entry level pipeline is not matching vacancies, then math suggests these percentages will only go higher. (The U.S. workforce average for the 55+ cohort is approximately 22–24%). When large cohorts of experienced library directors, systems librarians, and collection development specialists retire simultaneously over the next five to eight years, the institutional knowledge loss will be significant — and the pipeline, as currently constituted, cannot fully replace it.
ILS Consolidation: What It Means for Libraries in Practice
The ILS market has undergone significant consolidation alongside a meaningful open source shift over the past 10-15 years. ProQuest acquired Ex Libris in 2015; Ex Libris acquired Innovative Interfaces in 2017; Clarivate acquired ProQuest in 2021. As a result, Innovative Interfaces and Polaris — two of the most widely deployed library systems in U.S. public libraries — are now under the same corporate ownership as Alma, Primo, and several of the dominant academic discovery and scholarly workflow platforms. Open‑source ILS platforms such as Koha and Evergreen have shown steady growth in adoption over the past decade, according to installation and migration data reported annually in the Library Systems Report (Marshall Breeding, American Libraries Magazine, 2014–2023).
Vendor consolidation at this scale raises legitimate concerns about pricing power in contract renewals, platform lock-in as cloud-hosted systems replace locally installed software, and the long-term cost trajectory for libraries that are already budget-constrained. Open source adoption is the market’s natural response — and a rational one. A library that deploys Koha or Evergreen carries software costs that are predominantly implementation and support rather than license fees, with the additional benefit of community-governed development and no single-vendor dependency. The growing open source market share is a healthy signal, and I would expect share to continue to expand as budget pressure intensifies.
The Book Challenge Crisis: Organized, Not Organic
The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom’s (OIF) documented book challenge data over the past decade represents a transformation in the political environment around library collection decisions. In the recent past, deference to a librarian’s expertise in collection development was almost sacrosanct. That’s all changed. Documented challenges grew from 311 in FY2014 to 729 in FY2021, 1,269 in FY2022, and 4,240 in FY2023. That is a 1,264% increase over the decade.
Public library challenges grew from 127 to 1,112. School library challenges grew from 184 to 3,128. FY2023 outcomes from documented cases: 1,648 titles removed or restricted, 1,012 retained, and 1,580 pending resolution. ALA OIF consistently estimates that documented cases represent only 10–20% of actual challenges — meaning the true FY2023 challenge volume may be in the range of 20,000 to 40,000 incidents. Both absurd and unmanageable.
As widely reported, the FY2021–FY2023 surge is driven by coordinated, organized campaigns — frequently a single challenger or small coordinated group filing against hundreds of titles simultaneously — not by a spontaneous uprising of community concern about specific books. Many of the lists received by libraries are (carbon) copies sent to multiple libraries and frequently by non-residents. This is not the same as a parent objecting to a title on their child’s summer reading list. It is a systematic effort to remove books from public institutions, often following challenge templates distributed by national political advocacy organizations.
One important counter-narrative to hold alongside the challenge data: ballot measures for library funding passed at 81.8% in FY2023. The communities that overwhelmingly fund their libraries at the ballot box are not the same force driving organized censorship campaigns. The challenge crisis is real and serious, but it should not be mistaken for a wholesale shift in public sentiment toward libraries.
Looking to the Future
The vacancy crisis will intensify as retirements accelerate through 2027. Book challenge volume will remain above 3,000 documented cases per year, with state-level legislative battles over collection policies playing out in 15–20 states simultaneously. Open source ILS adoption expands as budget pressure drives migration away from proprietary platforms. And the BIPOC workforce gap — 17.5% against a 23% benchmark — will remain a structural weakness unless the sector makes a sustained, funded, and institutionally serious commitment to BIPOC LIS scholarship pipelines.
The average total cost of an MLIS degree in the U.S. is about $21,600, based on the most recent nationwide data for 2024–2026.
Low end (public, in‑state, online): ~$9,050–$12,000 total
Typical public programs (in‑state): ~$18,000–$30,000
Out‑of‑state public programs: ~$24,000–$40,000+
Private universities: ~$40,000–$66,000+ (some exceed $80,000)
Starting salaries across all MLIS programs range from $30,000 to $65,000 and with the disparity in vacancy rates it would seem a decent career path could exist. The talent and the community are both there. The institutional commitment to encourage more graduates has not yet matched the scale of the need.
Look for the next post in this series on the HR problems facing libraries. See the earlier posts for the intro to the series.
Full Library Presentation 2014 - 2023
Michael Cairns is a senior publishing executive and consultant. He can be reached at michael. cairns @ outlook.com or 908 938 4889