I think there's a cartoonist glut. Of course that's an opinion, so I don't exactly have proof. But my experience (and the experences of others) seems to indicate that there is a glut of cartoonists. Consider the cartoon syndication example. As I understand it, cartoon syndicates only select two or three new comics a year. And they usually choose those few comics out of thousands of submissions. Thus only a tiny percentage of cartoonists will get syndicated while the vast majority will never get syndicated. You'd have much better chances winning the lotto.

I've concluded that the best way to mitigate the cartoonist glut is through the Internet. Unike a newspaper which only has room for 20 or 30 comics, the Internet has room for millions of comics. There are billions of web sites after all. But it's not quite as easy as that since you have to go through the difficulty of finding the web site or web sites that will publish your comic. Even so, you have a better chance of getting a comic published on the Internet than you have of winning the lotto. And you have a far, far, far, far better chance of getting a comic published on the Internet than you have of or getting your comic syndicated.