US librarians employed

Major League pitchers throwing more strikeouts and American libraries employing fewer librarians, on opposite sides of the regression line. Two professions on different trajectories: one optimised by analytics, one trimmed by budgets. The decade was selective about who it kept.

MLB strikeouts per season climbed from about 31,000 in 2002 to over 41,000 by 2022 as bullpens specialised, four-seam velocity rose, and analytics rewrote how counts were managed. US librarians employed declined gradually as municipal budgets tightened and library systems shifted toward part-time and paraprofessional staffing. Two unrelated professional trends — one optimised by data, one squeezed by it — sharing a window because the same decade was either rewarding or punishing professions based on whether their inputs were measurable and growing.

Two professions, two graphs, different fates. The 2010s preferred the metrics it could see.