The job market hasn't always been bad: The case of Penn State

From the Chronicle of Higher Education this week:

The story of our 485 humanities Ph.D.’s is more complicated and considerably less encouraging. In the 2002-7 cohort, 52 percent found tenure-track positions right out of graduate school, either at a research university (17 percent) or elsewhere (35 percent). By contrast, only 27 percent of the 2008-13 group landed tenure-track jobs immediately after graduation, at a research university (6 percent) or other types of institutions (21 percent).

  That's a drop in TT placement rates of nearly 50%. Things changed in 2008 in a way that "well, the job market has always been bad" completely overlooks.