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

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How bad is the job-market?

In our new “how can we help you?” thread, a first-time job-marketeer writes:

I would love a “how bad is the job market” update now that it’s November, especially from those who have been on the market for a few years. In addition to any general updates people have, here are three questions I am interested in:

1) I am applying fairly widely in my AOSes, and my total list of jobs is ~60 (I have already applied to ~40). Is this dismal for applying widely?

2) I have been told this year (and perhaps moving forward) timelines will be all over the place because of funding, and so there might be more jobs posted in the spring this year and in future years (meaning it is still too early to tell *how* dismal the market is). Does anyone have intel on this?

3) I have been told that this year is expected to be *particularly* bad, and that next year is expected to be better than this year (even if still bad). Does anyone have any intel on this?

Do any readers have any helpful insights to share?

Posted in

18 responses to “How bad is the job-market?”

  1. Anonymous

    It is a lot worse than it has been previously for TT jobs in my area, at least. There have only been 2 jobs in my area advertised at R1 institutions (the only ones that I would even consider applying for, since I am looking to upgrade from my current job) and they have not been in the US.

    There have been a few at universities in parts of the US I personally would never consider moving to even at the best of times, and would rather change careers for my sake and my children’s than take those jobs if they were offered to me (deep red states, in random locations).

    In previous years, there have been at least 10 jobs per cycle in my area at good universities in good locations, and the positions in locations I wouldn’t consider has remained the pretty much the same for this year.

    There are, however, a lot of options for postdocs throughout Europe and a few in Canada.

    So, it depends what you think of as bad, and it depends where you are coming from and what your priorities are.

    Reply
  2. Anonymous

    Last year I applied for 56 jobs; this year I’m on track to apply for 48. The breakdown within that has changed — way fewer US TT research jobs, a few more postdocs, way more European/UK/Canadian jobs. Overall the job market hit has not been nearly as bad as I thought it would be, at least in my areas, for someone willing to leave the US. (Caveat, I heard last year was also a down year in my areas.)

    Reply
  3. Spreadsheet haver

    I have some data from previous years if it are helpful. For context, I applied in ethics, social/political, and some open AOS jobs, at a wide range of types of institutions across North America and Europe (in other words, casting about as wide of a net as one might cast). Here are the numbers for TT job postings that I found:
    – 2022-23: 79
    – 2023-24: 63
    – 2024-25: 75

    Reply
    1. Spreadsheet haver

      Okay, I got curious and looked at the market this year. I found about 50 jobs that meet the same filters as above, though notably roughly half are open AOS (a higher proportion than in previous years). So at least from this perspective, yes, this is a down year, but not catastrophically so, I suppose.

      Reply
  4. Anonymous

    1) how bad depends on your AOS, but if ~60 includes AOS: Open, then yeah that’s bad compared to the 2010s (which were not exactly boom times)

    2) i know of a couple places that will post jobs this winter (but no idea how widespread this is)

    3) nobody is in a position to know this

    Reply
  5. Believe half what you see and nothing you read in blogs

    This is my second year on the market. So far, it seems exactly the same as last year. In my mind, the job market gloom and doom that so many people were predicting to be the result of Trump admin policies has turned out to be unfounded.

    I am not surprised by this outcome. Philosophers in the blogosphere, or at least those who comment frequently, are very cynical, pessimistic, and emotional when it comes to issues that are even slightly related to politics. The comment section consensus is rarely a reliable assessment of what’s going on in the world.

    Reply
  6. Anonymous

    Perhaps commenters could say what their AOSs are. I’m generally a bit confused how people are finding so many jobs to apply to this cycle. In my AOS (lang/mind) there have been only a small handful of jobs advertised. So almost everything I’m applying to is open AOS. But there aren’t that many of those either. Most jobs advertised as “AOS: Open” on PhilJobs are not really open–e.g. a lot of these are actually philosophy of AI jobs.

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      I’m in metaphysics, and while this year could be worse (actually, it might be unusually good for metaphysics by raw job count–but not great for those not aiming for R1s), I’m still only up to about 15 applications. I’m also curious about the AOS of people with 40+ applications.

      Reply
    2. Anonymous

      I’m the commenter who has 48 — AOSes are language and value theory. Not sure why I have so many more. I did apply to a few value theory jobs, but also a good number of language and mind jobs compared to last year. There were a reasonable amount of ads in Canada and Europe — make sure to check jobs.ac.uk and maybe Philos-L in addition to philjobs. (Philos-L is a little annoying to navigate because there is a lot of stuff and a very small percentage of it is about jobs, but there are some European postdocs advertised there that are otherwise very hard to find.) Also — sorry if this is obvious, it wasn’t for me my first year on the market — I always interpret M&E in an ad to include language (though not M or E individually).

      For the metaphysics poster — I did not apply to a lot of (literal) R1s , seems like there are very few outside of AI. But I applied to similar kinds of jobs in Europe/Canada/UK.

      Reply
  7. Anonymous

    For me at least, this year is decidedly worse. For reasons involving my family, I have to be a little picky about location. So far I would say that there’s around 1/3 of jobs in comparison to each of the last two years. I fully anticipate no interviews, unlike the last two years.

    Reply
  8. Anonymous

    For my AOS (philosophy of science, some trendy topics but not AI) this year has been substantially worse than the last cycles in terms of US-based TT research positions (I don’t apply to teaching jobs which reduces my numbers). I’m genuinely surprised and glad for those who are reporting little change in their area. I don’t think the reported downturn in the market is merely a manner of internet hysteria as one poster implies. I’ve been on the job market for ~5 years and I noticed a major decrease this year in US R1s posting jobs in my area or open. To put numbers on it, last year by the end of November I had applied for 14 US jobs; the year prior it was 12. This year I have applied to 2 US jobs and have none more saved currently. I’ve been somewhat more picky this year, and have aged out of a couple postdocs, but not nearly enough to make up the difference.

    To answer the OP, I’d say they are doing really well if they have already applied for 40 jobs. There are always jobs posted in the spring, but later spring tends to be mostly non-US; I guess we’ll see if US jobs get posted late this year as well. In any case, you don’t need to worry that jobs will abruptly stop appearing. I recommend getting on philos-l if you aren’t already for the european postdocs. I won’t try to prognosticate about next year.

    Reply
  9. Anonymous

    I am a little surprised by the notes of optimism in this thread. The situation in Europe isn’t better than in the US. Perhaps it might seem so from a quantitative perspective, but the general vibe in Germany, France, Belgium and Switzerland is extraordinarily bad. Also, hiring committees at many European universities still adhere to the idea that a final decision must ideally be taken in the most nepotistic and unfair way. It seems that this idea has been particularly popular in the last two years.

    40 to 60 applications is an enormous number. I can’t imagine how one would write this many research proposals and teaching statements, even with a lot of recycling. If you do it and do receive feedback, that’s a good sign. I work in ancient and comparative philosophy and applied for three positions this year.

    One factor that hasn’t been pointed out in this thread is the new H1-B visa rule, which makes non-Americans ineligible for jobs in the US. I was about to submit some applications but then learned that candidates who will need to apply for H1-B visa from outside the US will be affected by the $100k rule, which, evidently, disqualifies them. So perhaps this will take some of the stress off American candidates.

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      In the US, tenure track (and even many/most? postdoc) job applications are typically pretty uniform — people use the same teaching statement, generic research statement, writing sample, and so on. Some people have a few different sets of documents for different kinds of jobs, and people do write distinct cover letters (though typically with a boiler plate). So it is not just a lot of recycling, it is just a very different situation from (my understanding of) a lot of the kinds of jobs there are for academics in Europe. I have only applied for postdocs there but it is a totally different ballgame with much more tailored materials for each place. Perhaps this helps explain how people can apply to 40-60 positions here fairly easily (though that is not to discount that it still takes a lot of time to apply to each job, especially if one is really targeting a place with one’s cover letter etc.).

      Reply
      1. A European

        Yes, and just a note to people from the US applying to EU jobs: the applications of US people who did not take any care to tailor their application materials to the place they’re applying to really stand out here – in a bad way. It’s a different set of rules and conventions and it pays off to try to follow them.

  10. Anonymous

    One thing that really needs to be stressed is the changes to the H1-B visa. There have been a number of jobs this year that have either written for clarification to ask candidates if they need sponsorship or have explicitly said you already need to have have work rights in the US to apply in the advert. If you are in the camp that requires them, the market is abysmal.

    Reply
  11. AGT

    There is no such thing as the EU or European job market. There are dozens of European countries each with its own idiosyncratic regulations. Forget this American perspective on Europe, it will not serve your interests. You have to identify which countries you are interested in and tailor your applications to those countries. (And even within the country there will be differences.) There have been so many threads on this, here as well as elsewhere, it is strange that this topic still appears.

    Reply
    1. A

      @AGT Sorry, who are you responding to? You seem to be taking issue to someone else’s comment, but I don’t see the conflict. Who was expressing the “American perspective” you’re taking exception to?

      Reply
      1. AGT

        It was just a general remark. American perspective was not meant negatively, the point was the contrast. Comments can’t be edited, so it now stays as it is.

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