What did the Fall 2023 philosophy job market appear to be?
Right here with a report is Charles Lassiter (Gonzaga College), who has gathered and analyzed the info.
(A model of this submit first appeared at Professor Lassiter’s site.)
2023 Philosophy Major Job Cycle Report
by Charles Lassiter
Howdy once more, associates! The numbers are in. Let’s take a gander on the philosophy job market this previous cycle. As a reminder, I outline “main cycle” as working from July to December. Let’s begin with the general image.
The most important teams had been tenure-track and postdoc, adopted by open rank hires. Listed below are the numbers for every.
Now for the historic perspective. The heavy stable strains are the regression.
Some miserable data right here. For the first job cycle, tenure-track jobs for junior school have proven no progress since 2014. However issues look completely different if we miss 2020. (Extra on that under.) Excluding that terrible terrible 12 months, tenure-track jobs pattern upwards. Huzzah!
Mounted-term junior jobs are trending barely downwards. However given what the info recommend about extra fixed-term jobs being marketed within the secondary cycle, this isn’t too shocking.
What jobs are rising most shortly? Postdocs. That’s excellent news for freshly-minted PhDs so far as paying subsequent month’s hire, however these jobs are for a restricted time solely. Moreover, it’s no secret that postdoc gigs are typically comparatively low-pay for high-labor. Some postdocs are pushing back. (That article appears at science postdocs and never philosophy ones. If readers need to chime in with their experiences, please do.) One clarification is that extra steady and high-paying jobs are being changed by postdocs, which saves universities loads of scratch—the analysis model of counting on adjuncts to fulfill demand.
Lastly, let’s check out junior positions over time.
Mounted time period and tenure-track junior positions are under and above common (respectively) however nonetheless inside one normal deviation. However what if we exclude 2020 as an outlier? Right here’s what we see:
Tenure-track jobs did unusually effectively in 2019 and 2022 main cycles, and 2023 is under common however not terribly so. Mounted time period is decrease by one SD and postdocs are larger by one SD—each of which, I feel, are regarding tendencies even with this extra optimistic view of the market.
So what to conclude? I feel the massive query is, ought to 2020 be excluded from the info as an outlier? Doing so offers a rosier view of the market. Nevertheless my very own hunch is to say “no,” and never simply because I haven’t had my afternoon espresso. An oft-shared joke on social media is that we’re experiencing once-in-a-lifetime occasions extra incessantly. The recession of 2007-2009 hit the market exhausting. Simply over a decade later, COVID hit the market exhausting once more. It’s, after all, a problem to foretell world catastrophes, however there’ll absolutely be extra as the results of local weather change are felt extra acutely. As a matter of private desire, given the selection of being optimistic or guarded about the way forward for the philosophy job market, I play it conservative.
Nonetheless, I’m open to arguments that 2020 actually is an outlier and may be (comparatively) safely excluded.
That’s all. Thanks, as all the time, for studying. If there are different analyses you’d prefer to see, please let me know!
(Notice to my fellow R customers: If you wish to begin taking part in with new colour palettes, check out coolors.co. It has some nice instruments, and it’s how I bought the colours for these plots. And if you wish to check out new fonts (these plots use Supply Sans 3 from Google), this is a great guide.)
