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A Golden Decade or an Approaching Storm
Jeffrey H. Altschul and Terry H. Klein (SRI Foundation)
In the summer of 2021, American archaeology confronted confusing crosswinds. In the United Kingdom, departments of archaeology were being shut down or scaled back. Among professional societies—in particular, the Society for American Archaeology (SAA), the Society for Historical Archaeology (SHA), and the American Anthropological Association (AAA)—leadership worried that similar cuts would be visited upon anthropology programs in the United States. At the same time, cultural resource management (CRM) firms faced increasing demands for their services only to find it increasingly hard, if not impossible, to find qualified archaeologists. Public agencies at all levels—federal, state, tribal, and municipal—were unable to fill open positions. Few candidates applied and those that did generally lacked the skill sets and experience the agencies desperately needed. Strange times indeed: training opportunities in archaeology were scaling back as demand for archaeologists was overwhelming supply.
But would these trends last? The SRI Foundation (SRIF), a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to advance historic preservation, developed an economic forecast for the CRM industry and labor market for the upcoming decade in light of the then-proposed and now passed, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (herein referred to as the “infrastructure bill”). The SRIF forecast will be published in the November issue of Advances in Archaeological Practice but is available now as an open access article on FirstView. The key findings are:
1. The US CRM industry—defined as public agencies and private sector companies that provide CRM services (e.g., archaeology, historic architecture, historic preservation planning, etc.)—will grow annually from $1.4 to 1.85 billion between Fiscal Years (FY) 2022 and 2031.
2. The increase in annual spending is due in part to expected growth in the US economy and to an additional $1 billion in spending on CRM services as part of infrastructure bill projects.
3. Full-time equivalent (FTE) CRM employment will increase from around 16,000 to 21,500 from the beginning of FY2021 to the end of FY2031.
4. Newly created jobs plus jobs vacated by those leaving or retiring will yield about 11,000 FTE open positions in CRM between FY 2021 and 2031.
5. Of the 11,000 positions, 8,100 will be filled by archaeologists.
6. Of the archaeologists, 5,650 FTE positions require advanced degrees (MA/PhD) to meet Secretary of Interior (SOI) professional qualification standards.
7. Based on current graduation rates, about 3,250 archaeologists will be granted advanced degrees between FY2021 and FY2031.
8. If all archaeologists who graduate with advanced degrees between FY2021 and FY2031 are employed in CRM, there remains a deficit of about 2,400 FTE MA/PhD CRM archaeologists.
An inadequate labor force will have three likely outcomes. First, projects will not be completed on time. If CRM is viewed as an impediment to federal infrastructure projects, there may be moves, as we witnessed with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, to restrict the reach of environmental and cultural compliance or to waive National Environmental Policy Act and Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act requirements entirely for classes of projects. In fact, there are concerted efforts right now in both houses of Congress to limit environmental laws to expedite federal project delivery. A second outcome to a labor shortage may be to employ individuals who do not meet SOI standards. There is no shortage of BA level archaeologists and some agencies have already tapped into this pool to fill CRM positions. Additionally, agencies will rely more heavily on “generalists”—environmental professionals from other disciplines—to conduct Section 106 compliance reviews. The third likely outcome will be for some universities to accelerate MA programs by making them shorter and less rigorous. While weakening programs should be discouraged, it is also important to stress that many current graduate programs are not producing graduates with skills and experiences that will make them successful in CRM careers. Graduate programs in general need to have a greater emphasis on CRM given that most archaeologists will be employed in this field.
Whether the next decade is a golden period for archaeology and cultural heritage or a period wracked by our failure to meet the country’s expectations to balance its historic fabric with economic development is in our hands. We cannot be passive. We must argue forcefully that archaeology is a subject worthy for universities to invest in and we must convince those training future archaeologists that CRM is a subject worthy of study. We also need to work collectively to make archaeology a viable career, creating a workforce that represents our nation’s diverse communities. The country has placed its faith in us to help decide what to protect and how to protect it while rebuilding our infrastructure and allowing economic development. We must meet the moment.
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