Newsroom employment has dropped by nearly one-quarter over the past decade, according to an analysis of federal labor data conducted by the Pew Research Center.

I’m one of the 33,000 who lost a newsroom job in that time.

That job, my very last in journalism, was editing copy and designing pages on a part-time, remote basis for the media conglomerate that had a few years before purchased the family-owned newspaper chain that was my workplace home for almost a decade. My job was eliminated, along with a great many other editors, most of them enormously talented and all of them hard-working.

I got my first big-kid journalism job in 2001, working as a copy editor-page designer-photographer-reporter at a tiny and not-great newspaper in southern Indiana. I worked very hard, and constantly, getting better at every aspect of journalism, and in exchange I earned just over $22,000 in my first year of working there.

My next stop would prove the last stop in my newspaper career before I made the jump marketing, a field that is far more stable and where no doubt thousands of other former newspaper people now toil.

But I still love newspapers, and I still love the news, which is why it’s so distressing to see headlines trumpeting the death of American journalism and blasting potential plans to “save” the industry.

As they say, though, trust but verify. I wanted to find out for myself if what’s true at the national level also holds true on a state-by-state basis? Is there anywhere in this country where a journalist can find steady employment? To find out, I examined some of the same data upon which Pew based its analysis, and I found some interesting stuff.

First, the Bad News

In my analysis, I found that among the three biggest newsroom occupations — reporter, editor and photographer — more than 26,000 jobs were lost between 2009 and 2018, a 10-year period.

That’s a decline of more than 12.5% over the decade in those three jobs alone, which likely excludes other newsroom employees who don’t strictly fit those roles, such as page designers who aren’t editors or newsroom clerks who aren’t reporters. Also, it’s important to note that not every reporter, editor or photographer works in a newsroom, but examining this data can help us draw important conclusions.

Losses have been the steepest in Delaware, where total employment in these three jobs has fallen off by a staggering 85.6%. No other state has seen even half the percentage of losses of reporters, photographers and editors.

Indiana, where I live and worked, is fourth on the list, which does not surprise me, given that almost everybody I know who used to work in journalism in the Hoosier State no longer does, whether by their choice or because of outside forces.

Reporters have sustained the steepest losses among the three occupations, with total reporter and correspondent employment falling by 19%, followed by photographers, who saw their ranks decline by 14% and editors, whose employment dropped a relatively modest 8%.

Among reporters, those working in Delaware have seen virtually all jobs disappear, with employment for reporters and correspondents falling by 95.4%. Editors have seen the steepest losses in Alaska (-54.5%), while photographer employment has fallen the most in Indiana, where jobs have declined by nearly 62%.

But There’s Good News, Right?

It’s just like a journalist to only report negative things.

Yes, there is some good news, depending on where you live or how far you’re willing to travel for a job.

Nine states have seen jobs for reporters, editors and photographers increase over the past decade, bucking the national trend, and several others have seen no change or a statistically insignificant decline.

Georgia has seen a huge increase in employment of reporters, photographers and editors, led by a 4,000% increase in the number of reporters and correspondents employed in the state. This is quite possibly a statistical anomaly, but it can’t be overlooked that CNN, which employs more than 3,000 people worldwide, is based in Atlanta.

Conclusion

Taking a look at the data, we can pretty clearly see that the state of affairs for job-seeking journalists isn’t exactly pretty. But that’s the macro view. A state-by-state look reveals something quite different, and many of the places where jobs are increasing are fun and exciting places to live.

Methodology

This analysis is based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics publications from May 2018 and May 2009. I compared employment for three specific journalism jobs — editors, photographers, and reporters & correspondents — to see which, if any states, have seen job openings for these news professionals go up over the past 10 years.