How the academic job market looks: several sets of comparisons

I know a lot of people have been interested in how this year's job market would compare to last year's, given how uniquely horrific things were due to COVID last time around. So, now that job ads have been posted for next year for about two months (job ads usually begin in early August), how do things look so far? Here are a few interesting comparisons (August 1st-September 30th):

Total Job Ads on PhilJobs

• 2021: 133 ads
• 2020: 65 
• 2019: 146 
• 2018: 156 
• 2017: 135
• 2016: 155
• 2015: 136

The good news, then, is that there are more than twice as many job ads this year as last year, and that this year's job market is fairly close to how things were pre-COVID. The bad news is that, compared to before COVID, this year's market so is still on the lower end of the spectrum. One other potential positive thing I've noticed this year, however, is that there seem to be more ads than usual that advertise more than one job (for example, a few ads advertise 2-4 jobs apiece!). I don't have time to compile data on this right now, but is worth bearing in mind.

What about 'tenure-track (or similar)' job ads? Here again are some comparisons:

'Tenure track or similar' ads on Philjobs

• 2021: 75 ads
• 2020: 22 (!)
• 2019: 80
• 2018: 106
• 2017: 83
• 2016: 95
• 2015: 88

Again, some good news: there are well more than three times as many TT job ads this year than last. The bad news? This year's TT market is still weak compared to pre-COVID. What about tenured jobs? Here is what we get:

'Tenured' job ads on PhilJobs

• 2021: 19 ads
• 2020: 12
• 2019: 19
• 2018: 18 
• 2017: 11
• 2016: 26 
• 2015: 25

In brief, this year's job market for tenured positions looks really strong, even compared to pre-COVID. What explains this? I'm not sure, but here's one obvious possibility: retirements (or worse?) due to the COVID pandemic.

Finally, what about 'fixed term' or 'contract type open' job ads (which I take it are generally non-tenure-track jobs)? Here's what we get:

'Fixed term' and 'contract type open' ads (i.e. non-TT job ads)

• 2021: 49 ads
• 2020: 37
• 2019: 57
• 2018: 38
• 2017: 45
• 2016: 54
• 2015: 29

So, this year's non-TT market also looks pretty strong, even compared to pre-COVID levels. On the whole, all of this seems to me to be (comparatively) good news. And of course things can still change. Job ads appear to have been coming out later this year, and in hurry over the past several weeks. So, I'll check back in after another month or so to see how things look then. Until then, I hope you all find these comparisons helpful!

Comments

[job seeker]

This is very interesting, thanks Marcus!

I'm on the job market this year, and I haven't been in previous years, so I've only occasionally checked PhilJobs in past years. But I have two impressions, and I was wondering if anyone shares them:

- There are only a few jobs outside of North America showing up on PhilJobs, and I feel like I have seen more of those in past years there. Is it possible that the European market in particular is less present on PhilJobs now than it used to be? (If that's the case, it would make this year's numbers look better...)
- There seem to me to be a lot of R1-jobs this year, possibly a greater share than in past years. But again, I'm not sure that impression is accurate.

[SLAC Associate]

It's possible this year's job cycle still hasn't quite peaked. By my count, there have been about a half-dozen ads every day this week, which by my memory feels like a whole lot for the last week of September. I don't know if anyone has data regarding the pace of ad postings this year vs. previous years, but I'd be interested to see if my intuition matches the reality.

And there's a plausible mechanism here: I strongly suspect many institutions made their decisions to hire significantly later in the calendar this year, waiting to see what incoming first-year enrollment would be before approving searches. Anecdotally, speaking of my own institution, our administration usually makes decisions about which searches to approve in April/May, and this year they waited until September 10th to approve any new hires. Across the college, we've got something like 8 job ads presently under review by HR before they go live, where normally those ads would've been posted a month ago or more.