MET member survey "How are you doing?"

Report summary

In November we ran a survey to ask how members were doing. We received 290 responses from a total of 505 members (57% response rate).

By activity, 89% of respondents were translators and 71% were editors, with considerable overlap. Many people did more than one type of language-related activity, including proofreading, teaching, copywriting, project management and research.

In a subgroup of freelancers only, almost two-thirds (62%) said their main income had dropped in the past two years. In another subgroup of active workers not close to retiring, 62% said they were worried or very worried about the future and 14% were looking at moving out of the language sector altogether.

However, it is not all depressing news. A quarter (26%) of younger respondents (under 40 years) felt optimistic about the future of their career and almost two-thirds (63%) of the same age category reported that they were now earning the same or more than two years ago.

How's MET doing?

We followed up with a second survey to find out how members thought MET was doing. Read a summary of the results in this news item.