Last updated at 4:20 p.m., Eastern time, on July 2.
As the coronavirus outbreak erodes financial health and administrative confidence at colleges across the country, many have started to lay off or furlough employees en masse to thwart colossal budget shortfalls. Amid this unprecedented challenge to the industry’s business model, The Chronicle is tracking those employment actions and others to better understand what America’s higher-education work force will look like after the pandemic abates.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in early May provided us with a first glimpse of the carnage the virus has wrought on workers who draw paychecks from American privately controlled colleges (not-for-profit and for-profit). The bureau, part of the Labor Department, estimated that 19,200 fewer workers were employed by these colleges in March 2020 (including junior colleges) than in February 2020.
For context, consider that from 1990 to 2020, the largest February-to-March negative nominal change in employment in at private colleges occurred in 2003, when 8,100 people were estimated to have left that particular work force.
Are you aware of furloughs, layoffs, the nonrenewal of contracts, or a permanent reduction of workplace expectations at a college or university that were spurred by the onset of the coronavirus? To tell us, use this form and provide relevant materials if you want your institution to be included.
The Chronicle has identified 224 institutions associated with a layoff, a furlough, or a contract nonrenewal resulting from Covid-19. At least 51,793 employees in academe are known to have been affected by those actions. However, because a specific or approximate count of leaves of absence, terminations, workplace reductions, or contract nonrenewals is not known for every action, the sum represents a significant undercount.
We will not be tracking actions that affect employees who work in hospitals associated with medical schools but who are not employed by the medical schools. However, The Chronicle will continue to monitor employment actions affecting workers employed by a medical school. We will not catalog layoffs of student workers.
At this time, we are not tracking employment actions taken by third-party service providers contracted or subcontracted by colleges.
The Chronicle defines employment actions as follows:
Furlough: an involuntary, unpaid leave of absence from work for a specific, disclosed period of time. Furloughed employees may be required to take off for a certain number of unpaid hours, days, or weeks.
Temporary layoff: an involuntary, unpaid termination for which a specific rehiring date is not provided, but the employer indicates that employees will or may be recalled.
Permanent layoff: an involuntary, unpaid termination for which rehiring is not a possibility.
Unspecified type of layoff: an involuntary, unpaid termination for which the permanence of separation is not known.
Contract nonrenewal: an involuntary cessation of a business relationship between a contingent employee and his or her institution, typically affecting those with fixed, short-term contracts (up to one year).
Permanent reduction in hours: an involuntary change in the expectations for the employee, resulting in a reduction in compensation. Such a change might include a shift from full-time status to part-time status.
In our data, each row indicates a single and specific employment action. For instance, Bob Jones University appears more than once in the table. According to Fox Carolina News, nearly 50 employees were expected to be furloughed by the university beginning on April 13. That was one single, specific employment action. Bob Jones also told Fox Carolina News that “an undetermined amount of additional furloughs will be made in coming weeks.” Those “additional furloughs” were a second single, specific employment action. For that reason, those two instances of furloughs are associated with Bob Jones in the table.
