by Carolyn Dicey Jennings
I recently joined Twitter and uploaded some quick attempts to sum up what has been happening with job ads on PhilJobs this year compared to a couple of past years. I noticed, first, that there are fewer job ads this year so far than in previous years, at least on PhilJobs (with some nice caveats provided in comments here). Second, looking at first AOS, the most sought-out area of specialization this year differs from previous years. While in my initial tweet on this I said that value theory appeared better off than other areas of specialization this year, that was based on a mistake. (You can check out the Excel file I used for 2 and 3 if you want to help me identify other potential mistakes. 1 is based on PhilJobs searches, not a csv file.) In terms of percentages, all areas of specialization are down this year since open searches are up, relative to last year. I take this increase in open searches to be a good thing, in terms of potentially increasing the intellectual diversity of philosophy, but I am interested in what others think about this. Third, if you look at the full AOS listing for job ads, certain words are more frequent this year than you might expect, given the first AOS listing, such as "science." Finally, if you look at the first-reported AOS of the bulk of the placed candidates in the APDA database, the AOS balance is different yet again (favoring LEMM over history and traditions, for instance). (In the future, I can break this down by TT placement year, but I didn't have time to do that for this post.) These are initial numbers, and the season just started, but I think this is a space worth watching. Here are some numbers and images (with 2015 highlighted in yellow):
1) Total Ads per Calendar Year:
| Ads for All Junior TT and Postdoc Jobs | 1/1-3/31 | 4/1-6/30 | 7/1-9/30 | 10/1-12/31 | Total Ads up to 10/1 |
| 2012 | 153 | 152 | 233 | 399 | 538 |
| 2013 | 193 | 179 | 153 | 176 | 525 |
| 2014 | 83 | 72 | 147 | 174 | 302 |
| 2015 | 81 | 65 | 116 | 262 | |
| Ads for All Junior TT Jobs | 1/1-3/31 | 4/1-6/30 | 7/1-9/30 | 10/1-12/31 | Total Ads up to 10/1 |
| 2012 | 16 | 11 | 112 | 157 | 139 |
| 2013 | 32 | 16 | 115 | 114 | 163 |
| 2014 | 28 | 12 | 102 | 103 | 142 |
| 2015 | 20 | 6 | 83 | 109 |
2) Junior TT Ads per 1st AOS Category and Hiring Season
| TOTAL | % | 8/1/2013-10/18/2013 | % | 8/1/2014-10/18/2014 | % | 8/1/2015-10/18/2015 | % | |
| LEMM | 83 | 13.43% | 26 | 17.22% | 21 | 15.79% | 14 | 11.29% |
| Value Theory | 191 | 30.91% | 45 | 29.80% | 44 | 33.08% | 35 | 28.23% |
| History & Traditions | 124 | 20.06% | 35 | 23.18% | 26 | 19.55% | 22 | 17.74% |
| Science | 57 | 9.22% | 8 | 5.30% | 19 | 14.29% | 17 | 13.71% |
| Open | 163 | 26.38% | 37 | 24.50% | 23 | 17.29% | 36 | 29.03% |
| TOTAL | 618 | 151 | 133 | 124 |
(Click image for full size)
3) Frequent Words in Full AOS Entry for Junior TT Job Ads per Hiring Season, as a Wordle
8/1/2013-10/18/2013 (Click image for full size)
8/1/2014-10/18/2014 (Click image for full size)
8/1/2015-10/18/2015 (Click image for full size)
4) AOS Category of Nearly 2800 Placed Candidates in the APDA Database
| First AOS | # | % |
| Value Theory | 724 | 25.88% |
| LEMM | 609 | 21.77% |
| Unknown | 572 | 20.45% |
| History & Traditions | 521 | 18.63% |
| Science | 371 | 13.26% |
| TOTAL | 2797 |
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