Grim Numbers

[lollardfish]

Academic Job Market.

The reality of radically differing job markets may be especially clear as 2011 begins with disciplinary associations gathering for job interviews at annual meetings and releasing data on the number of available positions. During the 2009-10 academic year, the number of positions listed with the American Historical Association dropped by 29.4 percent, according to a study the group will release today. That follows a 23.8 percent drop the year before. Last year, the association announced that the number of listings it received -- 806 -- was the smallest in a decade; this year's total of 569 marks the smallest number in 25 years.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have a friend who has a tenure-track job at an institution she hates in a city she hates. And she's looking at it going, "Well, shit." Because so many of her classmates are completely out in the cold, either scraping by as adjuncts or not getting work at all, and there she is with the tenure-track plum--and she would love to be anywhere else at all--and the numbers are just horrifying.

Bleh.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

I wonder if we have the same friend. And yeah.

There were jobs which would have merited going into another field rather than moving my family for something awful, but instead I fortunately have a job I deeply love. So there's that.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I know the person in question through very different circles than the ones through which I know you, so sadly I think there are just multiple people staring at the job that's supposedly what they worked through so many years of education for and going, "Really? For this?"

I'm glad yours is better. Because that's exactly the choice my friend is looking at; even worse, her spouse's field is even lower on jobs than academia, if you'd credit it, so hers is the only income they have.

It sucks, lo, mightily.