History Jobs Stabilized Before COVID-19

The number of faculty jobs in history increased by 0.9 percent in the 2019-20 academic year, driven by a 7 percent increase in tenure-track positions in particular. That’s according to new American Historical Association report on jobs posted last academic year. That’s pre-COVID-19 and related widespread hiring freezes, however, meaning that this temporary stability in the job market is already over. As the AHA’s Dylan Ruediger wrote in an analysis, “The long-term effects of the pandemic remain unknown, but in the short term, higher education has been rocked by news of program closures, enrollment declines, and faculty layoffs. The specter of these trends cannot but inform how we read this year’s report, which documents a new normal that might already be a thing of the past.”