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    The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…

Distribution of jobs by area in 2019-20

Philosopher Marcus Arvan (Tampa) has again compiled the data on the job market.  I'll repost just one data point, the number of tenure-track jobs, with the distribution of jobs by area of specialty (AOS):

Junior-level TT jobs advertised = 224

  • Value Theory = 76.8 jobs (34.3%)
  • Open: 46 jobs (20.5%)
  • History: 27.5 jobs (12.3%)
  • Science (including cog. sci) = 24.5 jobs (10.9%)
  • Core (mind, language, metaphysics, epistemology, logic) = 18.5 jobs (8.3%)
  • Social identity (race, gender, feminism, disability, etc.) = 11.7 jobs (5.2%)
  • Non-western: 11.6 jobs (5.2%)
  • Continental: 7.75 jobs (3.5%)
  • Religion: 1.25 jobs (0.6%)

As in prior years, we continue to see the decline of the analytic "core" areas (although some "open" jobs and some "social identity" jobs may go to folks in the "core").  Despite the foolish claim that philosophy departments in the U.S. are departments of "Western" philosophy, two centuries worth of Western philosophy (under the heading "Continental") account for just 3.5% of the the advertised positions, while non-Western philosophy jobs make up 5.2%.

It would be interesting to know the AOS of those who got the "open" jobs; if anyone compiles that data, please let me know.

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