Pity the poor researchers at the American Sociological Association. Every year they crank out a report—one of the most thorough of its kind—assessing the state of the academic job market in their field. Every year their findings can be characterized in one of two ways: either “downright bleak” or “cause for cautious optimism.” And every year, they have to come up with a reasonably catchy title.
Now that we’ve reached Report No. 6, released yesterday, these titles have begun to take on a cumulative force. They’re actually a pretty decent at-a-glance summary of the market’s recent trajectory: two parts TL;DR, one part found poetry.
In its recap of 2008—drawn, like all subsequent studies, from postings in the ASA’s own job bank—the association asked a question with dark intimations: “Down Market?” The following year—when job listings cratered, dropping by 35 percent—we got our answer: “Still a Down Market.” Well, that’s sorted, then.
Since then, though, the mood has lightened. 2010: “Moving Toward Recovery.” 2011: “On the Upswing.” 2012: “On the Road to Recovery.” C’mon, recovery! Happen, already! But the new report, which covers the 2013 job market, doesn’t provide much in the way of a payoff: “Faculty Position Opportunities in Sociology Appear to Hold Steady.”
The thing is: They did hold steady, at least when it comes to the top-line numbers. For the past couple of years, the sociology job bank has featured more listings than it did back in 2008, the year that prompted the “Down Market?” worries. In 2012, 507 assistant-professor, open-rank, and multiple-rank jobs were advertised on the sociology board; last year that number inched upward to 527. That seems like a picture of a market that has stabilized, even if it’s not thriving.
But dig a little deeper, and there’s something interesting happening. Not every advertisement in the ASA bank is for a job in a sociology department, of course. So the study categorizes the departments behind the listings as “freestanding sociology,” “joint sociology” (i.e., interdisciplinary departments), or “non-sociology” (entirely different departments willing to consider sociologists). In 2012, 191 of the 441 departments posting jobs in the ASA bank were “freestanding"; last year, just 140 of the 430 hiring departments fit that description. Over the past six years, it’s the joint and non-sociology listings that seem to be doing most of the growing:
This might matter. A freestanding department, after all, is a lot more likely to end up hiring an actual sociologist than, say, a law-and-politics department that is advertising an open position on several other disciplinary boards as well. (That’s from an actual example in the ASA’s “Road to Recovery” report. The department ended up hiring a geographer, not a sociologist.) So it’s fair to ask whether a non-sociology listing has the same value to a job-seeking ASA member as a freestanding one.
Is the dip in freestanding sociology postings a meaningful indicator or just a blip? Maybe next year’s ASA report will help tease this out. I’ll suggest “The Recovery Resumes” as a working title.