The State of the U.S. Cartography Business

Map of large underwater features. (1995, NOAA)

When I read the title The next hot job: cartographer and saw a picture of three people from CartoDB, I expected to read an article about the company. Why? Because the article appeared in Crain's New York Business! It's one of two articles about the growth (re-growth?) of geography and cartography as disciplines and  businesses in 2015.

Hot Jobs

The "hot job" article suggests that as the number of geography departments declined and the number of undergraduate geography graduates declined during the 1970s and 1980s, cartographers had to come from other disciplines. Alyssa Wright, now at Mapzen, but well known for her work at Boundless, studied a host of things are not cartography. In the last twenty years 15 colleges have added geography departments. The article notes the demise of geography at Harvard, and its re-birth.