In Fall 2023, we asked TypeWell transcribers to help us take a snapshot of the job market. Are transcribers getting enough work? Are we working remotely, or on site? How do feel about the future?

You can read our summary of those survey results here.

We then sent out a follow-up survey in Spring 2024 to give ourselves a more dynamic picture of the state of transcription work, asking the same questions.

Here’s what we learned.

In which settings did you work during the Spring 2024 semester?

Half of the transcribers who responded to our survey said that they were only taking remote transcription jobs in Spring 2024. A third were taking on-site jobs only, and the remaining transcribers were doing a mix of both. This shows a significant shift away from remote work, and towards on-site transcription.

For this current semester, is your volume of work more or less than what you’d hoped for?

In Spring 2024, two-thirds of transcribers reported that they were getting about the amount of work they had expected. Almost a quarter were getting less. Only a few transcribers were getting more work than they expected.

When asked what factors were affecting their volume of work, transcribers noted a rise in recruitment and hiring which created more competition for jobs. One transcriber mentioned low college enrollment, and another transcriber attributed their work load to an unusual number of dropped classes.

How do you feel about the current volume of work and the direction it seems to be heading?

Transcribers were roughly split on whether they were “concerned” or “satisfied” with their current volume of work and future prospects. Few were optimistic.

When asked to elaborate, transcribers said that the future seems uncertain. 

One transcriber thought that planning ahead and working with multiple institutions would help. Another transcriber expressed concern about a human-audited AI captioning system being tested at their workplace, and was unsure if they would still want the job if they were editing transcripts instead of producing them.

Workplace morale

Half of transcribers said that their colleagues and employers seemed to have good morale overall. Roughly a third noted an atmosphere of worry and concern at work, mostly due to automated captioning.

Comparison of responses to 2023 and 2024 transcriber surveys

A note about the response rate

The response rate to the 2024 survey was significantly lower than the response rate to the 2023 survey. This makes side-by-side comparison of these numbers a bit tricky.

Is it possible that fewer transcribers responded because fewer transcribers are working this semester?

Well, no. Our records show that transcriber license renewal rates are at 95%, an increase from last year. This is consistent with what transcribers told us in the 2024 survey– that transcribers are being hired at an increasing rate.

Perhaps transcribers felt that the second survey was redundant, or perhaps they were less motivated to respond because they were less worried about their workload.

Returning to in-person services

This was the biggest trend shift we noticed between our two surveys. 

The share of transcribers taking at least some remote work has declined from 82% to just 68% over the course of a single academic year. This may be due to the shift away from online learning as the pandemic subsides.

Satisfaction with work load

The correction towards in-person work seems to be stabilizing, with a greater share of transcribers reporting in Spring 2024 that they were getting as much work as they expected, or more (77% in 2024 vs 68% in 2023). However, a significant share of transcribers are still getting less work than they expected.

Anxieties about AI

Auto-generated captions continue to be a concern for transcribers, who expressed doubts about the new technology in both surveys. Because AI captioning is still largely crude and untested, the long term impact of this technology remains to be seen. But the low cost of auto-generated captions relative to the cost of human transcription is certainly a cause for concern. It seems likely that at some institutions will try it out as a cost-cutting measure.