Are you kidding: is there a glut ?
I've worked in a university fine arts department for the last fifteen years so I've seen this topic play out every day. The best estimate is that 97% of students that graduate with an arts degree will NOT end up working in the field of their degree. We have required courses on preparing for a career in the arts and the first thing we show students is a graph demonstrating the low rate of professional arts career participation post graduation. When visiting professional working musicians (both classical and jazz) give seminars to students they always stress how difficult it is to succeed, how well prepared one needs to be, how being 99% prepared isn't good enough. I believe it was the photographer Robert Adams who wrote an essay many years ago comparing arts schools to ponzi schemes. After WWII, we educated thousands and thousands of people in the arts under the aegis of the GI bill and that initial group of graduates just creating an ever growing group that needed employment, thus the arts education industry (his theory greatly simplified explanation.) I don't mean to sound too cynical but there probably is an element of truth in his thesis. Opportunities for musicians and actors have dramatically decreased since the advent of recording and broadcast media. These used to be vastly more opportunities for musicians before the phonograph record. Every town of any size had opportunities for musicians to make money performing and teaching. Needless to say, today's lifestyles and consumption habits have radically changed that situation. Just as fewer and fewer corporations are dominating the supply of consumer needs and wants, so do fewer and fewer musicians and actors fulfill our entertainment consumption habits. Consolidation is the watchword of the era.
