I had 12 conference interviews, 6 requests to interview, took 4, ended up going only to the 2 I wanted, and got an offer from both.
I'm in a semi-technical aspect of information science (knowledge management, design of information systems, etc). My classmates and I have no problem finding jobs, even the ones who are in the library science track. The problem is staying in school long enough to finish and not take a job ABD and never finish.
The salaries are very good in areas such as mine. In the part of my field geared more to library science, they can be a little lower than I would want, but very good compared to humanities grads. If you are a library science grad with a tech background, you can easily make 70K+, traditional fields may come in around 40-50K. I read about humanities grads happy to take 34K.
I used to practice law and I can't imagine working for years to get the doctorate and then settling for 34K. Again, this has to do with the competitive nature of fields like English lit. If you have thousands of un- or marginally employed lit majors, the schools can pay nothing and get away with it. In tech-related or professonal fields such as library science either you can work outside academe or so few go into the field, that the salaries are much, much better.
I got a very good offer, negotiated it up even further, am going to live in a low cost of living part of the country (part of the overall radiohead life plan) where I'll actually be able to buy a house and live like a person. Could I make more in industry? Yeah, but now I want to do something else with my life.
That is my problem...I am a history major. The pay for that area is awful unless you get to a huge university, so it is just not worth it to get the phd and try to become a prof.
I am trying to decide between teaching high school history/govt. and going into journalism to start out with after college; the latter would require getting a master's, but it would be worth it because I would advance more quickly to an okay wage (would likely start at 27,000 instead of 22,000 or so and would advance to 35 or so much more quickly). The pay for journalism would be really bad, but it would be worth it only having to take 2 more years. Having to take 4 more years to become a history prof with similar pay is not worth it.
I do wonder what journalism prof pay is like, but since it would be a humanities area, it is probably pretty low.
I guess if I want money, I do have two alternatives I may consider down the line if necessary: technical writing or public relations. Both would fit my personality well and actually pay a good wage.
But, being a professor is probably not for me. I wish you good luck in your career, however. We need conservative profs!