What is the job market looking like now for ...

[wannaphdnHistory]

people with a PhD in History? I have had a couple friends try to talk me out of going to grad school saying that I would never find a decent job. I know at one time it was slim pickings, but has the job market improved, or is it expected to improve? I know now we are in a recession and that does not help at all. I am just looking for the overall outlook.

[Nofia]

It's generally poor, abysmal in some fields (like, sadly, 20th century US, which is very oversaturated) and fair in others . It depends on what your specialty is...

[TMP]

Don't do it unless you're open to non-academic jobs like in government and museums. If you can open your mind and be willing to accept research assignments not really related to your interests, then you'll be opening yourself up to more opportunities.

[a piece of bread]

I want to repeat something I wrote in the Sociology forum. It depends on when you are receiving degree. There is no need to be worry about recession if you just start. Otherwise, consider any of oppurtunuties not only in the US but in Europe and non-academic jobs of course. If you think the world as global, you won't face any problems to find a job

[sankd]

Yeah, good luck if you do anything US and insist on only trying to be a professor. Unless you write the next Battle Cry of Freedom.

[Minnesotan]

The bad job market existed well before the current recession, and will (unfortunately) likely last well beyond it. Maybe I'm a little sick of hearing about it, but not everything in the world can be blamed on the media-driven economic downturn the U.S. has endured of late.

The sad fact is, if you're getting a PhD in history, you had better A) stand out as a superstar in grad school, or be prepared to work under less than ideal conditions (i.e. as an adjunct, at an unknown institution, outside of academia, etc.). The professors who tell you how bad the job market is are trying to do you a service: while they may like you and want you to succeed in your field of choice, it is also unethical to send someone to grad school without at leas a stiff warning about how bad the market is (and has been for 20 years in history).

[Sgt. Pepper]

In the 1950s up until 1965, there was a golden period where schools were fighting for history grad students, hiring them before their dissertations were even finished in a desperate attempt to fill tenure track vacancies... It's been downhill from there. I'm not going in expecting anything. Every field I'm in people are killing each other for part time jobs that essentially go nowhere. It's a bitch.

[natsteel]

Here is an article from the AHA regarding the job market for History PhDs:

http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2009/0901/0901new1.cfm

It includes this graph:

[misterpat]

I'm pretty sure job listings exceed PhDs awarded in the fields of African sistory and Latin American history. Other than that, we are all fucked.

[thepoorstockinger]

I was reading historiography book from 1987 and it was talking about how bad the job market was and that it had never, ever been worse. This is not a new problem and will probably only get worse for years to come.

That said: since we all want to go to grad school we are all convinced we can beat the odds!

[synthla]

Well I'm not entirely convinced I can beat the odds, but I would like to spend a number of years studying history full-time. I often think it would have been better had I gone straight to graduate school in history after undergrad rather than pursuing another career first, but at least that career is there to fall back on if I don't beat the odds.

[RF237]

In the 1950s up until 1965, there was a golden period where schools were fighting for history grad students, hiring them before their dissertations were even finished in a desperate attempt to fill tenure track vacancies... It's been downhill from there. I'm not going in expecting anything. Every field I'm in people are killing each other for part time jobs that essentially go nowhere. It's a bitch.

I rest my hopes on the fact that, someday, all those professors hired in the 50s and 60s will retire or pass away, opening the way up for us! I understand that many people like to be active/employed as late in life as they can manage, but it has always seemed to me like the humanities are currently overloaded with older professors who likely would have retired long before had they been employed in any other field/industry. BIG downside of tenure. I had a professor or two who could barely make it to class . . . Of course, here's hoping they hold on for 5-7 more years while I get my PhD!

[thepoorstockinger]

I rest my hopes on the fact that, someday, all those professors hired in the 50s and 60s will retire or pass away, opening the way up for us! I understand that many people like to be active/employed as late in life as they can manage, but it has always seemed to me like the humanities are currently overloaded with older professors who likely would have retired long before had they been employed in any other field/industry. BIG downside of tenure. I had a professor or two who could barely make it to class . . . Of course, here's hoping they hold on for 5-7 more years while I get my PhD!

Except that there is a huge pool of very bright, very qualified PhDs out there without TT positions who are amassing teaching experience and publications who are also trying to wait out those older professors... and that pool is only getting larger with each passing year.

[Carnage21]

Well it seems that the job market isnt as bad as it looks as long as you know where to look for jobs, and dont mind eating ramen for the rest of your life...but please tell me one thing. please tell me i didnt work towards a masters degree in public history only to find archivist jobs at $30,000/yr!?! I was making more than that running a sportsbar hell i was making more than that in the army, and that was before my degree.

[abitriez]

I seem to be hearing the exact same warnings about future job prospects at Canadian Universities. Unfortunately academics have a tendency of being 'trendy, somewhat like fashion. Things that are popular right now tend to lean towards race, culture, social, gender, etc history. A couple of my undergrad profs warned me about potential job prospects in the future and that my fields of interest are typically not in a very high demand. All they suggested was that you make yourself 'as marketable as possible' with your major/minors (in ph.d) and with what you study to give yourself the best chance of getting a job.

Honestly though, with the comments here about this being typical for the last 30-40 years, historians have generally succeeded so hopefully we will too!

[StrangeLight]

i'll be different!! i'll be the one that stands out! sure, the odds are tough, but i'm a go-getter and i have real talent and i work extremely hard, and i was one of the top students at my undergrad university, which is by no means a small institution, and my professors loved me, and i presented at a student-organized undergrad conference, and, and, and, and....

c'mon, people. we sound like those wide-eyed 18 year olds that move to hollywood thinking they'll be actors because they were just SO GOOD in their community theatre production of the little orphan annie and within a year they're doing porn and smoking PCP. and not even good porn, either. they're the extra girl in a threesome who lies there awkwardly and moans words of encouragement or licks butt.

a lot of those retiring tenured profs are going to be replaced with more adjuncts, not new tenure appointments. if the economy recovers 5-7 years from now, the job market for professorships will still be wretched for most subfields. students at my undergrad protest (with a good deal of media attention) every year because we have over 40,000 students and no one who can teach african studies in any discipline. for one thing, that's a really clear demand from the student body about what they do and don't want to see from the school's new hires. it's hard to justify hiring yet another americanist when a school so large has such a glaring educational deficit, and i doubt my undergrad institution is the only school in this position.

yeah, it might seem unfair that latin americanists and africanists feel courted by schools compared to americanists and europeanists, but i think it's even more unfair for entire student bodies to never have the option to take an african history or latin american history course even once during their degrees. american and western european history are oversaturated and [everything else] history is underrepresented. the world's a lot bigger than the industrialized west and i think it's petty and selfish for americanists to complain that no one will hire yet another 20th century US political historian. you'd have a hard time finding a department without a 20th century US historian, and you'd have a hard time finding a department with one latin americanist AND one africanist on staff.

[synthla]

american and western european history are oversaturated and [everything else] history is underrepresented. the world's a lot bigger than the industrialized west and i think it's petty and selfish for americanists to complain that no one will hire yet another 20th century US political historian. you'd have a hard time finding a department without a 20th century US historian, and you'd have a hard time finding a department with one latin americanist AND one africanist on staff.

If only I could develop an interest in either area...

[thepoorstockinger]

I seem to be hearing the exact same warnings about future job prospects at Canadian Universities. Unfortunately academics have a tendency of being 'trendy, somewhat like fashion. Things that are popular right now tend to lean towards race, culture, social, gender, etc history.

I'd say that the interest in "transnational" history and "atlantic history" are new (and possibly "trendy") but social history, gender history and cultural history have been in the centre of the profession since at least the early 80s in Canada and probably aren't going to fade away any time soon. Not paying attention to culture, race, and gender doesn't mean you're not trendy, it means you're out of date.

[natsteel]

Other than that, we are all fucked.

That pretty much sums it up. Though like a previous poster said, we all think we can beat the odds. But those are pretty long odds that get longer each year as the pool of PhDs continues to grow. Budding Americanists are the most fucked of all, of which I am one.

The post above which says you are out-of-date if you don't consider culture, race, and gender was absolutely correct... sadly.