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Job-Market Reporting Thread (2025-26)
Job-Market Discussion Thread (2025-26)

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What to expect from this year’s job market?

In our July "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

Hey search committees and people on the market, tell me what you think about my hunch. I get the feeling that this year on the market is going to be worse than last term. I think this is because philosophers from Florida and Texas are going to have a mass exodus this year because of quality of life reasons, attacks on tenure, attacks on woke etc. (I do know one person who has gone the other way, but I think those will be few) What do people think, am I being paranoid?

Fair question, and I have no idea. What do you all think? 

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10 responses to “What to expect from this year’s job market?”

  1. words

    Is this a constructive use of time, to speculate about this? Perhaps what is called for are specific suggestions that go along with one’s predictions of the 2023-24 job market…

    Reply
  2. Hermias

    “It is bad today, and it will be worse tomorrow; and so on till the worst of all.” – Arty Schopers, On the Sufferings of the World

    Reply
  3. Grudge Not Lest Ye Be Grudged

    Following words’ suggestion, I think that it’s a good time not to be fussy. I am going into a fixed but relatively long-term appointment, and thought it’s a disappointment in some ways, I don’t begrudge its length. Would I prefer a TT job? Absolutely, but I don’t see that getting easier any time soon. Contrariwise, there seem to be quite a lot of attractive postdocs around.
    I’m not in the US, but I don’t think of my TT prospects as “safe” from what’s going onin the US. I am expecting a flood of ultra-hot AOS and very talented US applicants for non-US jobs over the next few years, with the enrollment crisis and other issues with US universities, such as the “War on Woke” malarky and changes in abortion laws.
    For example, I have already been passed over for a (brilliant to the point of absurdity) candidate who told me that they hate the non-US country of that job, but they can’t find anything better back home. I can’t begrudge them for that either, considering some of the things that are happening in US academia and society more generally.

    Reply
  4. anon

    OP: Please spell out the concern further.
    For instance, “Worse” in what sense? Is it correct to assume that “worse” is meant in the sense of: one’s set of plausible jobs becomes smaller and/or less desirable? In order for that to follow from such an exodus (i.e., previously off-the-market/settled professors snatching up available positions), another premise is needed to avoid the exodus being balanced out by the vacancies they create. Is that other premise that many presumed vacancies won’t materialize because the TT line will be lost and/or won’t be filled until the following year’s cycle? Is it that the vacancies will be worse jobs than the ones taken, precisely for the reasons for the exodus?

    Reply
  5. OP here

    anon,
    yes, for many of the reasons you articulate. Next year there will be more people than usual vying for ever dwindling jobs. These people will be already Assistant Professors and will be taking jobs from people who are either just coming to the market or don’t yet have permanent jobs
    They will also be leaving jobs where the line might not open again and even if they do, it’ll be the year after. And those jobs that do get advertised will be jobs in places were tenure will have been quite eroded if not abolished
    We’ve already seen the first wave of this very thing from New College in Florida (and who could blame them!)

    Reply
  6. nonstick pan

    OP
    I think you are overthinking things way too much. You cannot realistically expect that a significant portion of philosophers employed in TT positions at Texas and Florida universities will go on the market. Why? Most people will never move from their first TT job – EVER. This has been studied in the academy in general. The academic job market is not a fluid market. There is a small subset of people who can and will move. And there are a very few people who can and do move all the time – you know who they are. But, in this case, the changes in Texas and Florida will probably have a negligible effect. Most people are stuck where they get their first TT job – they will be there for life.

    Reply
  7. bootstraps_ready

    I am with Hermias on this one.
    responding to some of @grudge’s comments
    I don’t quite understand the call to not be fussy, i.e., upset, disheartened, or anxious about the state and direction of the academic job market? People with PhDs (and many in some form of debt, in the u/s at least) should not be spending 10-15 years of their lives in temporary positions making a salary that is half what they deserve (and in “today’s economy” where one shutters at their supermarket receipt). Honestly, any more than 2-3 should be unacceptable.
    It may be a bit easier in certain parts of the world to do this, parts of northern and western Europe, for example, where things like health insurance and food don’t burn through entire salaries (tho I say this with recognition that places like Germany are even harder for TT than the u/s is). I see many adverts for jobs in east Asia but don’t know much about cost and quality of living in these places in relation to the posted salaries.
    I certainly never begrudge an individual for getting a job. But I am constantly disheartened by the passive approach professions in our field take to the job market and general state of affairs in America. Academic institutions are run like any other industry (hence the apt, cynical phrase, “knowledge factory”) and academics have become a part of the working class – which is simply to say more time is taken from us for less and less return. I think many people are in denial of this.
    While situations in places like Florida and Texas might be extreme, I think they represent the general direction of academic institutions in the u/s and that the “woke” aspect of this is really just to veil over the “degree mill profit model” that has been accelerated in the “post-covid” era.
    I don’t know if the general reaction to this is to be in denial or is just a collective feeling of resignation. That said, good luck to everyone and where are the 23/24 reporting and discussion threads? (:
    (PS – Perhaps institutions should stop awarding PhDs in humanities fields? We are pretending like these awards and titles are valued when they really aren’t. Before long, 80% of curricula will be ready made and instructors will be plug and play.)

    Reply
  8. Grudge Not Lest Ye Be Grudged

    bootstraps_ready,
    “I don’t quite understand the call to not be fussy, i.e., upset, disheartened, or anxious about the state and direction of the academic job market?”
    No, I don’t mean that at all. I meant it as a synonym of “choosy”.
    In particular, I mean that, for example, if you are choosing Post A over Post B because Post A keeps you in employment for longer, even though Post B is more attractive in some other ways, then that’s a good choice in my view. I have essentially taken a job on the assumption that there might not be an attractive TT job for me for the next 5+ years, and I’ve already been on the job market with 5+ years, publishing at a rate of 4 publications per year in that period (many in top journals) and having unusually strong feedback. I have had one TT job interview, ever. Believe me, I know about being upset, disheartened, and anxious about the job market!
    I grew up in an economically devastated part of a country which, at that time, had a high emigration rate going back beyond living memory. Emigrating for work happened to a lot my friends who had skilled parents. One of my favourite songs growing up was about generations of emigration and lost identities. Yet even I’ve been surprised by how bleak and fickle the philosophy job market has become.
    Going back to my initial post, here’s another thing that I meant: I was out of work right now, I would definitely not wait around for long. When times are rough, it’s easier to stay in a job than to get into one. And employers tend to be unforgiving of gaps on one’s CV.
    As for East Asia, at least in places like South Korea, Singapore, or Hong Kong, I have heard that the salary/cost of living ratio is very good. Quality of life is very idiosyncratic: I know people who hate it there and people who love it more than the West. The main downsides, I have heard, are distance from family/friends and envy among Western academics that e.g. people who quickly go from postdoc to professor in Asia have “jumped the queue” in both career and salary terms. I would consider that path, if I didn’t have better options on the table.

    Reply
  9. bootstapped

    @grudge
    I appreciate the reply. Agreed about the not being fussy part. Sorry for the misunderstanding but I was really just using your post as a jump off point.
    Glad you have something stable for now.
    BTW – 4 plus publications per year is pretty wild. I teach way too much to churn out quality papers at that rate, so kudos to you.
    Hate to use this divide, but I wonder if the publishing rate among analytic oriented and continental oriented philosophers differs at all? Perhaps a question for next months “How Can We Help You?”

    Reply
  10. Grudge Not Lest Ye Be Grudged

    bootstapped,
    Thanks!
    I’m not sure about analytic vs. continental publication rates, but I think that there’s a big difference in historically-orientated subjects vs. empirical or theoretically-orientated subjects.
    For example, historians whom I know have to put a huge amount of time into finding, reading, and sometimes translating primary sources. The flipside of that challenge is that a novel and interesting primary source is almost a ticket into a publication somewhere. Historians also usually author alone. In contrast, people in certain experimental sciences like psychology can end up with huge publication records by making minor contributions to a series of papers from a lab. It’s possible to have 10+ publications during your PhD in psychology.
    My impression from having been in several pluralist analytic-continental departments is that the level of expected historical work among continental philosophers is high, even for those who don’t do research that is strictly “history of philosophy”.
    This includes the challenge of style. For example, to work on Heidegger, it seems (from the outside) that you have to learn how to read people who write in a Heideggerian way (including Heidegger himself) and probably at least sometimes write that way yourself. But if you also want to start working on Husserl? You need to learn how to read and write in a completely different way. And there’s a lot of historiography to learn.
    By contrast, even in the history of analytic philosophy, there’s not a lot of historiography to learn, and you don’t have to write in e.g. a Wittgensteinian way to do work on Wittgenstein. Peter Hacker’s style is classic Oxonian analytic philosophy.
    So, if there is a difference in publication rates between the two traditions, I would think that it’s because continental philosophy is more labour-intensive. One way to test this would be to look at more/less labour intensive parts of the traditions. For example, groundbreaking formal analytic philosophy can easily take years to develop and get published. Analytic history of philosophy with just published works can be done very quickly, whereas hardcore analytic philosophy with archival travel/research and learning e.g. Polish or German can take many years to do.

    Reply

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