The State of Podcast Jobs

Hello! My name is Deanna and I help people create great podcasts. Every Sunday I'm sharing one tactical tip to make a killer podcast. So let’s get into it!

First, Happy New Year and I hope you are all doing as good as can be in whatever these times are.

Second, I kicked off my Saturday morning by looking for podcast production jobs and internally screaming at the state of things. And while I promise I’ll still give you one tip for your podcast, I want to talk about the state of podcast jobs first.

As a freelancer who has taken the last two weeks off, I realized just how much of my anxiety comes from work. I lost 6 podcasts in 2025. That means that I had 6 to lose. And since I wasn’t unemployed, that means I worked on even more than 6. Plus, I quit a 7th one that I’ll be concluding my time on tomorrow.

It might seem a little insane to willingly quit a podcast after unwillingly losing so many, but a thing I realized on my break is that there’s a lot of unnecessary stress put on freelancers. I work on podcasts that call for same day turnaround and I get it if it’s a politics or news show where things need to be timely. But every other type of podcast? I find it unnecessary.

At one point I was editing 10-15 episodes PER WEEK. I’ve hit such a bad stretch of burnout that taking two weeks off (which as a freelancer, were unpaid, naturally) didn’t feel like remotely enough time to recover.

So I was browsing jobs in an effort to find something that’s full time with benefits and saw the following:

• An unpaid audio/video production listing

• An on-site editor/producer position in Seattle that starts at less than $4 over the city’s minimum wage

• More and more job listings insisting that work must be done in office (all of which were in NYC)

Looking for work right now honestly just feels so pointless. And look, that’s not to say that I dislike all of my freelancing work. That’s not true. I do dislike a lot of it, though, which makes it tough to want to keep doing it.

For now, I think my solution is this: take less work for my sanity, work on building this newsletter, and see if there’s a way for me to build something of my own.

That said, this newsletter is currently sitting at 65 subscribers. I’m going to set a 6-month goal of getting that up to 500. If you enjoy these rants and tips (still coming, I promise), share it with a friend who you think might enjoy it to.

An additional that said, if you know of anyone looking for an editor (audio or video), I’m still happy to always have a conversation about potential work!

I didn’t even get into my rant about inconsistent clients who disappear for 6 months and then suddenly want episodes they recorded months ago done immediately… for a later time, I suppose.

BUT without further ado…

Today’s Tip

Given everything I just went on about above, my tip is to set a realistic production schedule. If you’re working on your own and need to get everything done in one day (and that works for you), then by all means, carry on.

If your show relies on multiple people, though, you might be making things harder than they have to be. Again, if you’re in the news business, that’s a different story altogether (which I will touch on more in future newsletters).

I’d say ideally, aim for a 1 week production timeline to start. I work on one show that gives me that as a minimum for the most part and it’s great. It allows me to do better work, too. Not to say I don’t do my best on the others, I do, we all just know it’s a lot easier to make mistakes when you’re constantly in a time crunch.

To get a little more specific, I’d actually say 1 week from the recording day, so don’t even include any pre-production in that. So you’ll record > edit > second round of edits if needed > finalize (show notes, episode artwork, etc.) > publish. If you make clips for your show, do that after the first edit.

If you enjoyed this newsletter and really want to level up your podcast, I’m bringing you tips from the smartest people in the podcast industry. I’m always looking for the best ways to help you grow your podcast. So be sure to subscribe and share this with a friend! And if there’s something you’d like to see covered, reply to this email.