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Post by Archivist on Mar 1, 2013 10:54:02 GMT -5
In February, 2013, the ASA Job Bank listed 41 pages of ads, for a current season total of 625. About one third of these were tenure-track opportunities. I updated table 11 and moved it here from the earlier post so that the new updates will appear on the same webpage.
Here’s the new table for the winter/spring season of the 2012-13 job market. Each month, after updating this table, I’ll add a post below with a short summary of the new count and include a link to this one. Table 11: ASA Job Bank ad pages, January to May, 2009—2013
============================================================= | 2009—2012 | Month 2009 2010 2011 2012 | Avg. (Sum) | 2013 -----------------------------------------|------------|------ Prev. June—Dec. 408 374 437 524 | 436 (436) | 544 | | January 29 34 46 44 | 38 (474) | 40 February 32 35 27 39 | 33 (507) | 41 March 25 21 34 33 | 28 (536) | 33 April 16 16 15 26 | 18 (554) | 40 May 4 14 24 19 | 15 (569) | 18 | | Season Total 514 494 583 685 | 569 (569) | 716 ------------------------------------------------------------- Source and Notes: See table 9.
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Post by wow on Mar 1, 2013 12:17:44 GMT -5
In February, 2013, the ASA Job Bank listed 41 pages of ads, for a current season total of 625. About one third of these were tenure-track opportunities. I updated table 11 and moved it here from the earlier post so that the new updates will appear on the same web page.
Here’s the new table for the winter/spring season of the 2012-13 job market. Each month, after updating this table, I’ll add a post below with a short summary of the new count and include a link to this one. Table 11: ASA Job Bank ad pages, January to May, 2009—2013
============================================================= | 2009—2012 | Month 2009 2010 2011 2012 | Avg. (Sum) | 2013 -----------------------------------------|------------|------ Prev. June—Dec. 408 374 437 524 | 436 (436) | 544 | | January 29 34 46 44 | 38 (474) | 40 February 32 35 27 39 | 33 (507) | 41 March 25 21 34 33 | 28 (536) | -- April 16 16 15 26 | 18 (554) | -- May 4 14 24 19 | 15 (569) | -- | | Season Total 514 494 583 685 | 569 (569) | 625* -------------------------------------------------------------
* Through February 28, 2013. Source and Notes: See table 9.
Wow, so only just over 200 jobs this year were tenure-track? Sheesh. So no matter where you're at: SLAC, R1, community college - whatever - you're pretty lucky to have landed a TT position .....
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Post by umm on Mar 1, 2013 12:24:20 GMT -5
No, I think s/he meant that 30% of the 41 for the month of February were TT. This shouldn't be that surprising this late in the game.
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Post by oops on Mar 1, 2013 13:01:28 GMT -5
No, I think s/he meant that 30% of the 41 for the month of February were TT. This shouldn't be that surprising this late in the game. Oops. ;D
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Post by Archivist on Mar 1, 2013 14:34:03 GMT -5
"umm" was correct: I was only referring to the 41 pages of ads from this February. I should have been more precise in my pronoun/antecedent construction. I generally don't break down these listings by rank or type of school; I'm not pretending that I'm performing any sort of market analysis here. (In fact, I'm questioning whether I need to continue this exercise beyond May – the trends and seasonal cycles seem pretty clear by now – but I'll save that discussion for later.) The ASA does, however, actually pay some people to look at this more systematically. Here's one table compiled from a recent report available on the asanet.org website; the statistics refer only to tenure-track opportunities. Table 12: Positions Advertised in the ASA Job Bank: 2009-2011, by Rank
====================================== Rank 2009 2010 2011 -------------------------------------- Assistant Professor 214 303 354 Open/Multiple Rank 89 125 126 Unspecified Rank 21 9 14 Total 324 437 494 --------------------------------------
Source: Figure 2, "Positions Advertised in the ASA Job Bank: 2009-2011, by Rank," from "On the Upswing: Findings from the ASA 2011-2012 Job Bank Survey" by Roberta Spalter-Roth, Michael Kisielewski, and Jerry Jacobs.
The report seems to focus only on the tenure-track side of the market, and it doesn't provide any statistics about the relative number of tenure-track to temporary, adjunct, visiting, postdoc, etc. positions. It's pointless to try to calculate any of those figures by using the data I've provided: it appears that they are counting jobs listed in calendar years, and they are being much more strict about inclusion criteria than I have been. (Plus, we know that a lot of these non-TT positions are never advertised nationally.) As a reminder, I'm just counting pages of job ads. Take the information for what it's worth.
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Post by Archivist on Mar 31, 2013 21:46:47 GMT -5
There were 33 more pages of jobs listed in March; I think that 8 of them were for tenure-track opportunities. (Some were hard to determine exactly, but most were for temporary positions with a few post-docs thrown in.) I have updated table 11 in the earlier post. We've seen 658 pages of ads this season, holding pace with last year's count.
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Post by Archivist on Jun 4, 2013 13:13:15 GMT -5
I have updated table 11 in the earlier post. There were 40 pages of ads in April, and 18 in May. Most of these latest ads were for fixed-term positions starting in the fall. We saw 716 pages of ads this season. Looking over the trends for the past few years, the conclusions seem pretty straightforward: - Fewer schools are advertising positions in the summer, and it is no longer a norm to get the word out early in order to generate interviews at the Annual Meeting (whether using the Employment Service or not).
- Most positions are advertised in September and October. November application deadlines help departments bring in candidates and make decisions before winter breaks commence.
- A few more tenure-track jobs get listed between November and February, but that's when the fixed-term market kicks into higher gear.
- The market is much stronger than it was a few years back.
None of this is very earth-shattering, of course.
At this point I am thinking that this post marks the end of this data series. As I have mentioned several times, this is a fairly crude measure of job market activity, and a more sophisticated analysis should parse out some basic info for each data point: type of school, type of appointment, specific department. The goal would be to more accurately identify entry-level tenure-track positions in sociology departments at institutions granting four-year degrees, since that is what most ABDs and recent graduates are looking for. Not so onerous a task, really, but I'm not willing to make the commitment to do this every month. The data collection process is further complicated by the recent update to the ASA Job Bank website. Previously, all positions could be accessed through a distinct url that didn't require any login. (This was not an advertised feature, but rather a bug that was easily exploited to create an archive of all positions.) This made it theoretically possible to parse out some of the variables for each listing using a relatively simple Python script. That is no longer the case. (In fact, I have found the summary listing method a bit buggy. If I attempt to look at all of the ads from 05/01 to 05/31, I get an empty list. Setting the dates from 04/30 to 05/31, however, works just fine. I suspect that they'll correct this sometime soon, so this is just a minor issue.) The point here is that attempts to automate a data collection and parsing scheme are, at first glance, much more complicated if at all possible.
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Post by Archivist on Oct 8, 2013 14:43:29 GMT -5
As I’ve stated before, I’ve had concerns about the validity of my earlier data series. I have questioned whether this is really a good measure of job-market activity. More specifically, I think the statistics I’ve presented can be skewed by not breaking out - tenure-track vs. fixed-term positions
- non-academic positions
- academic rank, especially assistant vs. full professors
- cross-disciplinary positions in which sociology is one option
- community colleges vs. four-year institutions
- immediate hires vs. those for the upcoming year
- duplicate ads in different months for the same job
Last night, I decided to see how many of the 347 the ads in the ASA Job Bank posted between May 1st and September 30th would be excluded if I actually treated each as a data point with the following variables: - Institution Name
- Institution Location
- Posting Date
- Deadline Date
- Appointment Date
- Primary Area of Specialization
- Tenure-Track vs. Fixed-Term
- Type of Institution
For this last variable, I created three categories: - Has a PhD Program (a simplified version of the old Carnegie “R1” classification)
- Other Public (mainly regional universities funded by state legislatures)
- Other Private (mainly liberal arts colleges, some small, some selective)
As before, my source has been the compiled ASA Job Bank listings I have been collecting at the end of each month, saving the combined list as a single .pdf file. I then extracted some basic information text fields common to each ad using a Python algorithm (such as Name, Postion, Listing Dates, etc.), but I had to actually read each listing to get more specific data from the body of the ad (such as areas of specialization and application deadline). Table 13 presents one summary of this new data series, similar to the tables seen above. It breaks down job postings by the month they first appeared. I’ve limited these data, however, to only include academic positions available to ABD or recent grads, i.e. assistant professors or open-rank positions. I have also excluded all institutions outside of the United States. Finally, I am only tracking jobs that are primarily housed in sociology departments or require a degree in sociology; these do not include cross-disciplinary postings where the department might take somebody from political science or anthropology. As I suspected, this reduced the number of listings quite a bit: by my count, there are currently 186 opportunities available. Almost half of the opportunities listed in the Job Bank don’t fit the criteria stated in the previous paragraph: junior-level academic positions in the US requiring a PhD in sociology. Table 14 does something similar, but excludes the forty-some criminology positions. (Why single out criminology, and not medical soc or social psychology? We know that we’re still in the midst of some disciplinary boundary formation, and our ASA Job Bank doesn’t even include all of the criminology jobs out there. Maybe that’s a discussion best suited for a different thread.)
Table 13: Monthly ASA Job Bank Entry-Level Ads, May–September, 2013, by Institution Type
=============================================== Month Total | With PhD Other Other | Programs Public Private -------------------|--------------------------- May 1 | 1 0 0 June 16 | 12 1 3 July 54 | 32 8 14 August 55 | 31 13 11 September 60 | 11 36 13 October -- | -- -- -- November -- | -- -- -- December -- | -- -- -- | May—Dec. 186 | 87 58 41 ----------------------------------------------- Source: I created these statistics using the "Job Search" webpage of the ASA Job Bank (JB). At the end of each month, I specified a "Search By Date Posted" range and saved all listings in a separate .pdf file. After extracting some common field data using a Python script, each ad is examined for additional information.
Notes: These statistics only pertain to entry-level, tenure-track positions (assistant professor or open rank) requiring a PhD in sociology, advertised for US institutions that offer at least a four-year degree. All positions have a start date of fall, 2014.
Table 14: Same as Table 13, Excluding Criminology Positions
=============================================== Month Total | With PhD Other Other | Programs Public Private -------------------|--------------------------- May 1 | 0 0 0 June 15 | 12 0 3 July 40 | 26 4 10 August 43 | 22 12 9 September 45 | 7 29 9 October -- | -- -- -- November -- | -- -- -- December -- | -- -- -- | May—Dec. 143 | 67 45 31 ----------------------------------------------- Source: See Table 13.
Notes: See Table 13.
Tables 15 and 16 look at the data in a different way by focusing on application deadlines rather than posting dates. I discovered that posting earlier in the summer doesn’t necessarily mean the institution will be reviewing applications (or making hires) months ahead of others. Several ads posted in July and August had October deadlines; in theory, many of the schools posting ads in late August or early September could be looking at similar applicant pools as those who posted months earlier. In practice, however, most of the schools with September deadlines are PhD-granting institutions. It isn't true that all R1s go early, but we can say most of the early deadlines are for R1s. Table 15: Deadlines for ASA Job Bank Entry-Level Ads, May–September, 2013, by Institution Type
================================================ Window Total | With PhD Other Other | Programs Public Private --------------------|--------------------------- Jul 01-15 3 | 2 0 1 Jul 16-31 2 | 0 0 2 Aug 01-15 4 | 0 2 2 Aug 16-30 2 | 0 0 2 Sep 01-15 23 | 19 2 2 Sep 16-30 25 | 14 8 3 Oct 01-15 82 | 43 22 17 Oct 16-31 14 | 2 8 4 Nov 01-15 24 | 5 13 6 Nov 16-30 3 | 0 1 2 Dec 01-15 4 | 2 2 0 Dec 16-31 0 | 0 0 0 | May—Dec. 186 | 87 58 41 ------------------------------------------------ Source: See Table 13.
Notes: When a school states “open until filled” without specifying a deadline, the posting date is used for this variable. Table 16: Same as Table 15, Excluding Criminology Positions
================================================ Window Total | With PhD Other Other | Programs Public Private --------------------|--------------------------- Jul 01-15 2 | 1 0 1 Jul 16-31 2 | 0 0 2 Aug 01-15 1 | 0 2 1 Aug 16-30 2 | 0 0 2 Sep 01-15 20 | 16 2 2 Sep 16-30 20 | 11 7 2 Oct 01-15 61 | 31 17 13 Oct 16-31 10 | 2 6 2 Nov 01-15 20 | 4 11 5 Nov 16-30 2 | 0 1 1 Dec 01-15 3 | 2 1 0 Dec 16-31 0 | 0 0 0 | May—Dec. 143 | 67 45 31 ------------------------------------------------ Source: See Table 15.
Notes: See Table 15.
I will update these tables periodically as more data comes in, but not necessarily on a monthly basis. I’ll post a note below when I do. At this point I have no intention of coding all of the previous years to make historical market comparisons.
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Post by anony on Oct 8, 2013 17:04:28 GMT -5
This is great... thanks so much, archivist!!
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Post by Archivist on Oct 9, 2013 12:46:27 GMT -5
I’ve done some preliminary analysis on the areas of specialization found in the entry-level job ads found in the ASA Job Bank. This required a lot of delicate coding decisions. In general, I recorded the first area listed in the ad. Most, of course, list several related areas. Some schools state they are open to specialists in any subfield, but then in the next breath claim teaching theory/statistics/etc. is a primary responsibility, so in those cases I coded that first teaching area. (“Open” really does mean open, with no strings attached.) When a school listed multiple disparate subfields as options (ending the serial list with “or”), I counted that as “multiple.” Table 17: Areas of Specialization in Entry-Level Ads, May–September, 2013, by Institution Type
====================================================== Area Total | With PhD Other Other | Programs Public Private --------------------------|--------------------------- Criminology / CJ 43 | 20 13 10 Health / Medical 12 | 6 3 3 Race 10 | 4 3 3 Gerontology 6 | 1 4 1 Statistics 6 | 2 4 0 Stratification 6 | 3 2 1 Theory 6 | 1 1 4 Environment 5 | 3 2 0 Family 5 | 1 1 3 Gender 5 | 2 2 1 Methods 5 | 1 1 3 Urban 5 | 1 2 2 Organizations 4 | 4 0 0 Quantitative 4 | 1 3 0 Religion 3 | 2 1 0 Demography 2 | 2 0 0 Education 2 | 1 1 0 Social Movements 2 | 0 1 1 | Open 12 | 8 3 1 Multiple 19 | 6 9 4 Other 24 | 18 2 4 | Total 186 | 87 58 41 ------------------------------------------------------ Source: See Table 13.
Here’s a list of the “Other” specializations that didn’t really fit into any of the above categories: - Africa
- Community
- Comparative Int'l
- Development
- Deviance
- Economic / Political
- Food Policy
- Globalization
- Human-environment
- Inequality
- International
- Korean Studies
- Macrosociologist
- Migration
- Political, Economic Soc
- Population, environment
- Poverty
- Sexuality
- Social Justice
- Social Psychology
- Social Work
- Spatial Analysis
- Sustainability
- Symbolic-Interactionism
I will update this table periodically when I revisit the previous ones.
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Post by Archivist on Oct 9, 2013 14:10:08 GMT -5
One last bit of analysis, addressing the question “Where are all the jobs?” quite literally. Here’s a breakdown of the top states with ads out so far this year, broken down by type of institution. Table 18: Top States with Entry-Level Positions, May–September, 2013, by Institution Type
==================================================== State Total | With PhD Other Other | Programs Public Private ------------------------|--------------------------- California 21 | 10 11 0 New York 14 | 5 5 4 Illinois 10 | 5 1 4 Massachusetts 10 | 5 2 3 Ohio 10 | 6 2 2 Pennsylvania 9 | 2 0 7 Michigan 8 | 4 2 2 Texas 8 | 4 4 0 Wisconsin 8 | 1 4 3 Maryland 6 | 2 2 2 Mississippi 6 | 4 2 0 North Carolina 5 | 0 4 1 Virginia 5 | 3 2 0 Colorado 4 | 1 2 1 Connecticut 4 | 1 1 2 Florida 4 | 2 2 0 Rhode Island 4 | 4 0 0 | Other 50 | 28 12 10 | Total 186 | 87 58 41 ---------------------------------------------------- Source: See Table 13.
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Post by Slow Clap on Oct 24, 2013 12:50:24 GMT -5
Bless you, sir or madam. Bless you.
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Post by Thanks on Oct 25, 2013 11:33:29 GMT -5
Thanks again for all the great data. It really does help to see it laid out like this.
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Post by MktOverview on Mar 28, 2014 8:45:50 GMT -5
Now that the job market season is winding down, does anyone have insight on where one might go to see an overview of what this year's market looked like? Either an update to Archivist's work from last October, or another source?
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Post by George Clinton on Mar 31, 2014 14:12:37 GMT -5
Is it just me or are there far more temporary jobs in proportion to TT jobs than there were in previous years? I mean, yes, I know this is the direction academia is headed, but it was particularly striking to me this year.
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