As an academic (though not the humanities), I've long heard about the awful academic job market in history in particular and assumed that maybe 10-20% of history PhDs landed a TT job, with a strong bias towards a handful of high prestige programs. Apparently, in 2017, AHA actually tracked every single history PhD awarded in the U.S. between 2004-2013 (approx. 8,500) and examined their current job placement. Of those, they were able to track down 93% (the ones with missing data are still included in the dataset). A little over 50% of the entire sample had a tenure-track or tenured faculty job by 2017, with the vast majority at 4-year schools. About 16% had a non-tenure track faculty job (unfortunately, they didn't break this down by FT NTT and adjunct). An additional 6% were in higher ed admin and 1% were post-docs. Of the non-academic jobs, 1.6% were unemployed and the rest were in government, non-profit or private sector jobs.
Of the most recent cohort (2011-2013) in the dataset, approx. 43% were in TT jobs in 2017 (again, the vast majority being in 4-year institutions), and approx. 21% were in NTT faculty jobs, 6% were in higher ed admin and 2% were postdocs. Of the remaining, 6% had missing data and 1.5% were unemployed, with the remaining working in non-profits, private sector, or government.
The data are here, if you want to play with them: https://www.historians.org/wherehistorianswork (apparently, AHA is releasing the data for 2014-207 PhD awardees in 2022)
Obviously, these data aren't glowing--I don't think anyone wants to endure a PhD program for a 40-50% chance of a getting a TT job and an 8% chance of being unemployed (if you assume all those with missing data are unemployed)--but they are honestly much better than I expected, especially assuming that at least some of the academic admin and outside of academia jobs are stable and decently paying and some of the NTT jobs may be stable as well.
What do you all think of these data? What do you expect to see the 2014-2017 awardee cohort data?
AHA member who is studying data science here.
IMO, the study does not inspire confidence in the AHA's mastery of data analytics. Although the study is well intended, it's closer to GIGO than a useful tool that can help aspiring graduate students make informed decisions when addressing a key question: "If I enroll in a doctoral program in history, what kinds of outcomes are likely?" (I'm suggesting that the population should not be the the 8,951 historians who earned their doctorates, but the tens of thousands of students who went to graduate school.)
The study's greatest drawback is that suggests that the use of descriptive statistics alone is an acceptable alternative to inferential statistics.
The approach to data collection raises questions. Most notably, this one.
At no time were the individuals themselves contacted to supply information.
The use of a survey with a statistically significant number of complete responses could have been used to perform an analysis of the assumptions used during the data analysis.
The way historians are categorized by area is perplexing. For example, the study counts historians in administrative positions as tenure track so an undisclosed number of Americanists are counted as Americanists when they may not be performing the work of Americanists. Additionally, the assumption that a dissertation title can be used to predict the job description a successful applicant was hired to fill is misleading in many ways. According to the study, a specialist in Eastern European history who gets a TT position teaching survey courses at a community college counts the same as a similarly trained historian getting a position that allows opportunities for professional growth.
The study also neglects to point out that historians may end up for competing for academic jobs against candidates from adjacent/overlapping disciplines including African American studies, American civilization, and women's studies.
TLDR. The study is closer to GIGO than a well designed data science project that identifies a problem/question and presents actionable solutions for interested parties.