Update to 2024 Secondary Cycle Post

Hey there, a reader on Daily Nous suggested that the final plot of degrees conferred versus jobs posted wasn't that bad with the former relativized to the latter.

The lower 'ratio' line is degrees conferred per job posted. It looks fairly stable, hovering around 1.3 PhDs per j0b posted. There's a downward trend from 2020-2022, but it's too soon to say whether that's a new trend or a fluke. But we can make the analysis a little more sophisticated. The values for 'ratio' don't take the backlog of PhDs into consideration. Here's an idealized model: every PhD who didn't get a job in year T will apply again in year T+1. (This is idealized because some PhDs will stop looking for jobs, many of these jobs are fixed term, some PhDs will look for new jobs, etc.) In the idealized model, the backlog of PhDs accumulates over time, and it hovers between 1.5 and 1.6 PhDs per job.

These idealized models suggest that the market is bad (on average, 2 jobs for every 3 philosophers) but it's not getting worse over time.