I decided to do some counts of how many jobs there were of various kinds up for grabs on the market this time around. There’s 254 jobs listed in Jobs for Philosophers volume 159, and I broke these down along four axes. (UPDATE: I’ve now done this analysis for both volumes of JFP. The post is here.)

First, area. I was really crude here – just breaking down jobs in one of the following three categories

• Metaphysics – Construed to include logic, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, epistemology and philosophy of mind.
• Ethics – Construed to include political philosophy, feminist philosophy and aesthetics (which was surprisingly well represented this year)
• History – Construed to include, well, history

When a job was listed as being open, I counted it as 1/3 a vacancy in each field. When the area didn’t easily fall into one of these three areas, I guessed. When there was an open job with a preference listed, I read between the lines (i.e. guessed) as to whether it was really open or whether they were basically looking in the area listed as being preferred. So the margin of error on all this is off the charts already. A more precise breakdown would be more useful, but also more time-consuming. (If anyone does one, let me know and I’ll happily link to it/post it.)

Second, job standing. This was broken down into short-term, tenure-track and tenured. When a job was listed as open rank, I counted it as 1/2 a tenure track job, and 1/2 a tenured job.

Third, whether the job was listed in a philosophy department or not. (198 of the 254 were.)

Fourth, whether the job was in a top 50 program, or equivalent for departments without a PhD program. I imagine this category isn’t that important to some, but I care about it, so I ran those numbers at the end. Here’s how the 254 jobs available break down.

Metaphysics – 71.8
Ethics – 111.8
History – 70.3

Short-Term – 49
         Metaphysics – 10.3
         Ethics – 29.3
         History – 9.3

Tenure-track – 170
         Metaphysics – 47.9
         Ethics – 69.9
         History – 52.2

Tenure – 35
         Metaphysics – 13.6
         Ethics – 12.6
         History – 8.8

When we restrict attention to jobs offered within philosophy departments, the numbers are

Total positions – 198

Metaphysics – 63.3
Ethics – 74.8
History – 59.8

Short-Term – 16
         Metaphysics – 6
         Ethics – 9
         History – 1

Tenure-track – 154
         Metaphysics – 45.7
         Ethics – 57.2
         History – 51.2

Tenure – 28
         Metaphysics – 11.7
         Ethics – 8.7
         History – 7.7

When we restrict attention again to the top 50 (or equivalent) departments, the numbers are

Total positions – 63

Metaphysics – 31.2
Ethics – 26.7
History – 15.2

Short-Term – 13
         Metaphysics – 5.7
         Ethics – 6.7
         History – 0.7

Tenure-track – 37.5
         Metaphysics – 15.2
         Ethics – 13.7
         History – 8.7

Tenure – 22.5
         Metaphysics – 10.3
         Ethics – 6.3
         History – 5.8

Obviously there are some rounding errors so the numbers don’t all totally add up, but given the caveats at the top I think they’re not useless.

If you want the raw file to check my coding (and frankly I probably made dozens of errors on the top 50 list – I wouldn’t be surprised if I forgot to check that marker for one of the 15 Princeton jobs), it’s here, but be warned that’s a 400K Access file.