New APPS

Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science. Mostly Philosophy.

recent posts

about

    Tracking The Job Market: A Start

    by Carolyn Dicey Jennings

    I recently joined Twitter and uploaded some quick attempts to sum up what has been happening with job ads on PhilJobs this year compared to a couple of past years. I noticed, first, that there are fewer job ads this year so far than in previous years, at least on PhilJobs (with some nice caveats provided in comments here). Second, looking at first AOS, the most sought-out area of specialization this year differs from previous years. While in my initial tweet on this I said that value theory appeared better off than other areas of specialization this year, that was based on a mistake. (You can check out the Excel file I used for 2 and 3 if you want to help me identify other potential mistakes. 1 is based on PhilJobs searches, not a csv file.) In terms of percentages, all areas of specialization are down this year since open searches are up, relative to last year. I take this increase in open searches to be a good thing, in terms of potentially increasing the intellectual diversity of philosophy, but I am interested in what others think about this. Third, if you look at the full AOS listing for job ads, certain words are more frequent this year than you might expect, given the first AOS listing, such as "science." Finally, if you look at the first-reported AOS of the bulk of the placed candidates in the APDA database, the AOS balance is different yet again (favoring LEMM over history and traditions, for instance). (In the future, I can break this down by TT placement year, but I didn't have time to do that for this post.) These are initial numbers, and the season just started, but I think this is a space worth watching. Here are some numbers and images (with 2015 highlighted in yellow):

    1) Total Ads per Calendar Year:

    Ads for All Junior TT and Postdoc Jobs 1/1-3/31 4/1-6/30 7/1-9/30 10/1-12/31 Total Ads up to 10/1
    2012 153 152 233 399 538
    2013 193 179 153 176 525
    2014 83 72 147 174 302
    2015 81 65 116   262
               
    Ads for All Junior TT Jobs 1/1-3/31 4/1-6/30 7/1-9/30 10/1-12/31 Total Ads up to 10/1
    2012 16 11 112 157 139
    2013 32 16 115 114 163
    2014 28 12 102 103 142
    2015 20 6 83   109

    2) Junior TT Ads per 1st AOS Category and Hiring Season

      TOTAL % 8/1/2013-10/18/2013 % 8/1/2014-10/18/2014 % 8/1/2015-10/18/2015 %
    LEMM 83 13.43% 26 17.22% 21 15.79% 14 11.29%
    Value Theory 191 30.91% 45 29.80% 44 33.08% 35 28.23%
    History & Traditions 124 20.06% 35 23.18% 26 19.55% 22 17.74%
    Science 57 9.22% 8 5.30% 19 14.29% 17 13.71%
    Open 163 26.38% 37 24.50% 23 17.29% 36 29.03%
     TOTAL 618   151   133   124  

    (Click image for full size)Chart

    3) Frequent Words in Full AOS Entry for Junior TT Job Ads per Hiring Season, as a Wordle

    8/1/2013-10/18/2013 (Click image for full size)

    2013

    8/1/2014-10/18/2014 (Click image for full size)

    2014

    8/1/2015-10/18/2015 (Click image for full size)

    2015

     

    4) AOS Category of Nearly 2800 Placed Candidates in the APDA Database

    First AOS  # %
    Value Theory 724 25.88%
    LEMM 609 21.77%
    Unknown 572 20.45%
    History & Traditions 521 18.63%
    Science 371 13.26%
     TOTAL 2797  

     

    Posted in , ,

    5 responses to “Tracking The Job Market: A Start”

    1. Jason Avatar
      Jason

      You do great work Carolyn, keep it up.

      Like

      Reply
    2. graduate Avatar
      graduate

      I agree–thanks for the great work.

      Like

      Reply
    3. Gordon Hull Avatar
      Gordon Hull

      First, let me join others in thanking you for doing all this work.
      Second, and this is an open (?) question for me: what does one make of the increase in “open” AOS? I totally get how more open positions might be good for the academic diversity of the profession. But let me toss a couple of thoughts out there, and see what others think. First, I think an “open” ad is likely to result in the hire of someone who is the “best” philosopher according to the criteria of the search committee. Without reviewing all the literature on what “best” means sociologically, it seems to me that open ads could result in the increasing homogeneity of the departments that list them. The only way to check that tendency, I’ve been taught, is to list AOS’s that don’t map onto what an average member of the department in question is likely to think represents “excellent” work or “important” contributions to the field. This process would be particularly difficult in departments that were already fairly narrow.
      Second,from my experience at least, an “open” AOS is likely the result of departmental indecision about what the job should be. There’s often appended clauses in such cases, such as “but the department has teaching needs in medieval” or a list of AOC’s to the effect of “some combination of x, y, and z would be really desirable.” that’s at least some kind of signal that the search isn’t totally “open,” as well as where it’s really going…
      The thought of being on an “open” search terrifies me – the number of applicants would be large enough that it would be impossible to responsibly get through them without some sort of heuristics and shortcuts. But at least at my current institution, you need legally defensible ways to cut candidates – and “doesn’t do what the ad says” is by far the easiest. So I can’t imagine being on an “open” search committee.
      I’m interested in what others think of this.

      Like

      Reply
    4. Derek Bowman Avatar
      Derek Bowman

      Professor Jennings: I agree that the work that you’ve spearheaded to gather more information about job openings and placement is really valuable. But I wonder if you could say more about what purpose these sort of “hot take” statistics of the moment serve. It is of course understandable that there would be lots of anxiety and speculation about the job market this time of year, and it’s quite understandable that candidates’ introspection would lead them to wonder “is this year worse/better for me”?
      Because of the small and incomplete data sets, there are already reasons to worry (at least at the margins) about how representative PhilJobs postings are for the discipline as a whole, and how much that representative varies from year to year. For example, was 2013 the first year PhilJobs merged with JFP? Was that the same year that the site began charging for ads?
      Add to this the uncertainty about the timetable for job postings, both because of the elimination of the print-focused JFP and because of the rise of Skype interviews, and it seems like we have plenty of reason to wonder how telling same-time-last-year comparisons are at this stage of the process.
      I worry that, like health/science coverage in the mainstream media that is focused around headline-grabbing “new study proves X” reporting, this proliferation of undigested and (in isolation) unreliable statistics gives a false sense of objective knowledge, while distracting from the more difficult business of producing and analyzing more reliable information.

      Like

      Reply
    5. Carolyn Dicey Jennings Avatar
      Carolyn Dicey Jennings

      Good question. The first (temporal) purpose was to test claims that were being made (at, e.g., Philosophy Smoker). This is a pretty standard practice of mine–I see someone make a claim (or I make an assumption/claim), I question the claim, I look into the claim, I communicate back. I would describe this as something like curiosity, perhaps with a contrarian edge. The second purpose, and the reason that I posted here, was more practical. I realized that the information I found might be useful. Further, I realized that it was more useful to have multiple metrics to look at the trend (I realized this in correspondence with Ned Block, who has a knack for helping me to see things from a different angle). I think the information might be useful to, for instance, graduate students wondering if they should consider non-academic jobs and perhaps develop skills now that would help them to attain such jobs and, separately, philosophy professionals wondering how things are going in the field and if they need to activate their marketing skills on behalf of their discipline. It is good to be cautious, but it is also good to be expedient and to notice trends when you have a chance to change them. As to one of your specific questions, I think the jump from 2012 to 2013 may well be the year that PhilJobs merged with the APA. But the trend continues beyond that, into 2014 and 2015. As for the business of producing and analyzing more reliable information, I am all for that. I am not sure there is a lot of business there, but I would be happy for it to develop. I see this as a first pass.

      Like

      Reply

    Leave a comment