What are the job prospects in ADR?

Last week there was a report on NPR about the job prospects for recent law school graduates. It said that “at some schools, less than a third of their graduating class were obtaining long-term, full-time legal jobs” and that “since 2009, the median starting salary in private practice has fallen 35 percent” (1).

That report focused on lawyers, but what about “alternative” dispute resolution experts? In a recent interview Vivian Scott said the following when she was asked what she would advise someone who pursued a career in ADR: “Don’t quit your day job… it can be very, very difficult getting business” (2). When I contacted various mediators and mediation centers in my area they all reported business was very slow.

So what is the state of the ADR job market? Is it very good as reports like “Mediator Ranks Among Best Careers for 2009” (3) would you believe when they state that “a career as a mediator offers a strong job outlook and high job satisfaction”? Or is it not so great and articles like “Too many mediators, not enough mediations: is it fair to keep training neutrals with career prospects so grim” (4) paint a more realistic picture when they say that graduates are rarely able to make a living as a mediator, quoting a Teaching Fellow at Harvard whose data shows that the “supply of mediators far outstrips their demand and paints a distressing picture of the realities of mediation practice for the hundreds of aspiring mediators who emerge each year from trainings and degree programs across the U.S.”?

The good news is that the job ranking was published by a well known organization and that it considered not only pay, but also job satisfaction, training difficulty, prestige and the job market outlook (5). The bad news is that mediation has not appeared in the rankings since 2009.

More detail? The American Center for Conflict Resolution Institute says on its webpage (6) that “according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics … the Mediation profession is expected to grow as fast as the average through 2016… mediators earned a median income of $49,490. Furthermore, formally trained mediators have excellent employment potential.” Legalcareers (7) reports that “earnings for mediators range from $28,090 to $102,202 per year with median annual wages estimated at $49,490. Hourly rates range from a low of $13.50 to a high of $49.05 with a median hourly wage estimated at $23.80.”

For anybody interested in getting more detailed statistics for arbitrators, mediators and conciliators – with employment, location and income information – I highly recommend the Occupational Employment Statistics published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (8) that were mentioned above. It has not only official, relatively up-to-date data, but it also has some maps that provide the information on state and county level.