From 2008 to 2015 - or in other words, post-crash - there were, on average, 29.5 tenure-track German job ads posted to the ADFL job information list each year. Looking at more recent history, from 2012 to 2015, the average of 27.5 is nearly the same.
Last year was different: 17 tenure track jobs. After 7 weeks of job-list postings, 2017 is running just barely ahead of the pinnacle of awfulness that was 2016: we have 16 TT jobs this year compared to 15 last year at this point. Perhaps we'll see a few more. The opening-day number predicted 15 total, while the 6-week number predicted 19 total - but the 6-week number is, historically, not any more accurate than the opening-day prediction.
But wait, you say, what about 2015? We're running just barely behind where we were after 7 weeks in 2015 (17 TT jobs), and 2015 turned out close to the recent average (26). Maybe we'll see a bunch of jobs turn up in December and January!
It's not impossible, but I suspect not. As you look around the country, do you get the feeling that university budgets are improving, the humanities are more valued, and the importance of foreign languages is more broadly accepted?
I think instead what we'll see is a couple more jobs trickle onto the list by spring, and the new normal will be 15-20 TT jobs in German each year rather than 25-30. Or 1 job for every 4-5 new Ph.D.s rather than 1 for every 3, since the number of Ph.D.s isn't declining.
The market is now small enough that it's hard to tell the difference between a normal level of year-to-year volatility, and an extinction event.
(For you emeriti out there, this makes the job market half the size it was at the absolute bottom of the 70's crash [37 in 1970; average of 71 from 1968-73] and the brief 80's crash [34 in 1982; average of 50 from 1980-84]. Every decade prior to this one enjoyed average numbers between 50 and 70, while the average for the post-crash decade is 27. No, the job market has not always been this bad, and repeating that myth is making things worse.)
Are there any number of jobs that don't appear on the JIL? I'm an Assoc Germ Prof on a search committee (for another, less commonly taught language), and we had to forgo the JIL this year because of the expense. We simply posted elsewhere and made other efforts to spread the word like the job wiki and direct contact to graduate program directors. Maybe we're not the only ones doing this. And if we're not, I wonder if it's a trend that would affect the numbers in any significant way.
ReplyDelete