Sure. I work in higher education in history.

The job market is very, very bad for fresh PhDs right now. I know it's "always bad" but consider that many universities lost a lot of room-and-board and tuition revenue during the pandemic, which translates to true hiring freezes. Many people will ride the postdoc and VAP and adjunct circuit for a few years before they break down and leave the academy. PhDs are a little bit of a racket anyway: there are always more doctoral students than there are jobs on the other end. But it's really bad now.

If your goal is to conduct research at an R1 or R2 university with a light teaching load, then the most important thing is getting into a top program. If you're in America and working in American history, that pretty much means Wisconsin, Yale, Harvard, Columbia.

You should also pick a school based on your advisor and specialty. Who do you want to work with? For instance, JHU and Penn may not be top overall history programs, but they are the top if you want to specialize in the history of medicine.

And you better publish in a field-leading journal during your graduate work. If you don't have a JAH or similar byline, you won't have a great chance. It also helps if your dissertation wins competitive grant funding or even an organization award after you defend, like a "Best Dissertation" prize from AHA, OAH, SHAFR, AAHM, etc etc.