Philjobs in August: the best market in years?

I know this season's academic job market has just begun, but I was curious what the job market looks like so far. So, I looked up the number of ads posted to PhilJobs this August, compared it to the previous 10 years, and here is what I found:

Number of job ads posted in August

• 2022: 56
• 2021: 35
• 2020: 17
• 2019: 53
• 2018: 42
• 2017: 35
• 2016: 46
• 2015: 49
• 2014: 37
• 2013: 55
• 2012: 63

Obviously, the academic job market in philosophy is perennially tight, and many of these are relatively small differences, but still: at least so far, 2022 seems to be the best job market so far in the past 10 years. Hopefully things keep up, and I'll post updates each of the next few months.

Good luck, everyone. I know the job market is brutal, but we're here to help here at the Cocoon in any way that we reasonably can!  

Comments

[Curious]

Thanks for gathering this info, Marcus!

One trend I've noticed over the past couple years is that a greater proportion of posts are not TT. Moving forward, it'd be great to see if the larger number of posts (if it holds) reflects a larger number of TT posts or also the adjunctification (post-docification?) of the profession and universities more generally.

[22-23?]

I also noticed that many of the August postings were for positions that begin this academic year (22-23). Does this year’s total include these jobs? (And do the totals for the earlier years?) Thanks!

[Marcus Arvan]

@22-23: I sorted the searches by job ads posted during August each year, regardless of when the jobs actually begin. So, the same types of jobs should be included each year, though they obviously jobs with different start-dates may vary significantly across different years. The update I plan to provide on October 1st should provide additional clarity on how this year's market looks for jobs beginning next year!