Bret Devereaux

The issue with that is that this is a stocks-and-flows problem. Each year that the number of new PhDs is much higher than the number of jobs, the job market is essentially picking up job-debt, because those PhDs do not go away or poof out of existence. 8/25

Some handful of them, each year, give up and do something else. Of the people I know in that category, very few of them are happy about it. Universities and sometimes departments like to say nice things about alt-ac, but fairly few people in alt-ac WANT to be. 9/25

It's not *none* mind you, some people thrive in alt-ac jobs...but there's a lot of bitterness and broken dreams in alt-ac too, especially since many supposedly alt-ac jobs don't even remotely require a PhD. They're not alt-ac jobs, they're just jobs. 10/25

But of course a lot of a given year's unlucky candidates do not just leave. They get adjunct gigs, or teach high school, or university admin jobs or whatever and then apply again because they want to actually get the job they spent a decade training for. 11/25

There are a ton of scholars on that particular merry-go-round on this birdsite. That means that each year the job market is bad (blue line below orange line), it is getting worse, because most of the gap from the previous year rolls over into the next. 12/25

So when you are assessing 2019, you don't just want to think in terms of comparing it to another year, you need to be thinking 2019, plus most of the 2018 jobs gap, and the 2017 jobs gap, and the 2016 jobs gap. 13/25

In history, that gap only goes back really to 2008, but in some other humanities disciplines, hiring has been underwater since the 90s. The terrifying thing about the history graph is that for the humanities, history is relatively *better* than most. 14/25

All of that then runs into this year. Obvious there's no data for this year, but signs point to a year probably not meaningfully better than 2019 or 2020. But we know one thing that is likely to be higher: PhDs granted. 15/25

Most departments I have knowledge of either formally or informally did the same thing: they extended all of their PhDs an extra year. Which means both the classes of 2020 and 2021 are going to be on the market this year. Along with a *decade's* worth of job debt. 16/25

Of course everyone thinks they have it hard! We are humans and so we can feel our own hardships but can only observe the hardships of others. But, my friends, this is why we have data. And the data tells us that, yes indeed the current situation is *different.* 17/25

I understand why it seems like so many academics off of the job market want to believe that current conditions aren't *that* different from what they experienced. It's comforting, it lets them believe that they got their jobs from merit and not luck... 18/25

...that if they were on this job market today, they'd succeed there too. Those kids, they think, just need to stick it out a year or two, like I did! There's comfort there. But just because something is comforting doesn't make it true. 19/25

Worse yet, that vision provides an excuse not to do anything, to tell one's self that, with a bit of (someone else's) elbow grease, at least the 'worthy' candidates will all find jobs. 20/25

It sure seems to me that most departments have at least one disaster hired 'for promise' so this is hardly good for departments either. Meanwhile good candidates with great CVs languish because they were unlucky in that crucial first year...22/25

...and hiring committees that don't understand what has changed don't give them a second look because they assume that if you've been on the market for 3-4 years you must be bad. But that's just *normal* now - those candidates are fine! 23/25

Solutions? 1) Jobs-having academics need to abandon the comforting lies for the uncomfortable, data-driven truth. Yes, the job market is different now. 2) Stop 'hiring for promise.' It's a bad strategy that is all about delaying compromises by accepting risk. 24/25