Graduating divinity students are feeling trepidation as the contracting economy has led congregations across the religious spectrum to cut or downsize clergy positions, according to The New York Times.

The anecdotal evidence collected by the Association of Theological Schools, which covers 250 graduate institutions in the United States and Canada, has found job listings for ministerial positions down by about one-third at major seminaries serving both evangelical and mainstream Protestant denominations. The Jewish newspaper The Forward reported last month that Jewish seminaries accustomed to placing nearly all their newly minted rabbis were finding jobs this year for only about half.

…While evangelical churches tend to see it as a temporary reversal in a continuing boom, the Conservative Jewish movement and mainline Protestant denominations like the Presbyterians had been retrenching well before subprime mortgages and credit-default swaps intruded into congregational finance. Only the Roman Catholic Church, with a well-known shortage of priests, has more openings than applicants. And that, in turn, has led to a round of mordant jokes among seminarians about converting to get a job.