The American Historical Association has published several studies showing career outcomes for history PhDs, the results of which you can see here in this interactive database. It can be further sorted by sub-field (e.g. PhDs in pre-1800 American history, in post-1800 African history, etc) and by the cohort of PhD graduation - as well as by university. A quick perusal will turn up some surprising results, depending on what you want to research and what skills you have these may be disheartening, or a good pat on the back. A decent amount of recent history PhDs, even the majority in some fields, are in 'tenure-track' positions - the optimal career path and the rates of general unemployment are very low even amongst the more recent cohorts. The core source of dissatisfaction isn't that history PhDs can't get any work, it's that those TT positions can be limited, very few openings come up every year, and they're fiercely fought over. A lot of the work many historians have as adjunct staff or non-TT staff can be precarious, demanding and pay poorly - a lot of historians are in a rough place.

There's no denying that academia is a bloodsport. There are a lot more PhD students graduating then there are new jobs every year - add to that all the PhD graduates from prior years, all the people in present TT positions looking to change university of employment and so on and so forth - the competition for any new position at a decent university is going to be fierce. In some fields, like American history or European history, the competition is particularly severe because of just how 'popular' those fields of study are amongst PhD students - those two categories constitute, by far, the majority of history PhDs in the US - at a rate well above any job openings. In these circumstances, going to a good university has a serious impact on your employment. My honest advice to anyone looking to pursue a PhD in either of those mega-fields would be to not do so at all, unless you're at some of the best universities in the US.

Other fields, Asian history, African history, Latin America, etc - typically have much higher rates of TT employment in general across the board. When you look at African, Latin American and Asian history PhDs from good schools - even the most recent cohorts are virtually all in TT positions. In contrast to much of history PhDs, people in those circumstances (smaller fields, good school) actually have very good job prospects for working in the field.

In short - success for early career historians are contingent upon several factors - what their specialisation is, what university they're at and the much harder to predict (or rely upon) factor of how noted their research and publishing will become. Clearly, those who have award winning dissertations or research will have far greater rates of successful employment even in a difficult field. These 'rising star' historians who become prominent at younger ages do exist, but normally there is a great deal of specific and contextual factors behind their early research being seminal or noticed by others, and they are very much the exception. Certain fields are much more conducive to seminal research than others - Nazi Germany for instance, is a much harder topic to crack to the top of than something like Australian colonial history (where a great many previously 'unknown' and younger historians have managed to rise to prominence in just the last two years). This has a lot more to do with the state of evidence, what existing research is present and how many historians are working on any given subfield than it has to do with the inherent quality, personal skill or intuition of the historians themselves. Plenty of amazing historians struggle to carve their own niche out of a dense field.

In other words, there's a handful of yardsticks by which you can look at career prospects. Remember that plenty of people work in archives, museums and other areas of public history, archaeology firms and that the connections between law and history skills are quite close. A decent amount of historians transition to working in law, and a lot of lawyers go into history. A law degree is an amazing qualification to have, and it would stand you in very good stead even if you wanted to pursue history ultimately.

My honest advice is to be brutally truthful with yourself, read as much as you physically can on what you want to study. Look at what language skills, what disciplinary backgrounds and what sort of areas of study are in demand in the field. It would also be a good idea to try and engage in your own private research - gain a familiarity with the materials, the archives, the documents so as to get a better sense of the field and the nature of its research. Remember that becoming a historian is much more like wanting to be a successful author or musician, in some ways, than it is like wanting to go into a more normal career - you should go in knowing it isn't a stable career field or a field for everyone, that you're going out on your own in a lot of ways, will be competing with a lot of contemporaries, and that your primary driver is going to have to be passion pure and simple.

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