Organization: TECHNION - Israel Institute of Technology.
Date: Saturday, 26 Sep 1992 16:41:37 IST
From: <CERLPDR@TECHNION.BITNET>
Newsgroups: sci.research.careers
Subject: Re: US academic job market improving?

>achin@math.tamu.edu (Andrew Chin)writes:

>My impression is that we've already seen the worst, in science fields.
>America is heading back to school, and teachers will be needed.  Our
>department made 15-20 hires over the summer.

    Are you referring to specific enrollment data? If so please post it, I
for one would be quite interested. However, need for teachers doesn't
necessarily mean increased hiring. It's always possible to increase class
size and/or simply increase faculty teaching loads. But in any case, the
following shows that it's wise to take any job market prediction with a
grain of salt.

    In the July 1991 issue of SIAM News Hirsh Cohen related the results of
a rather interesting study. Unfortunately, he gives no specific reference.
He writes the following:

   "I do remember very well, however, since I've just seen the work, some
interesting results of two economists who studied the accuracy of science
and engineering manpower projections. They examined a rather large set
of projections, some done for specific disciplines and some for all
engineers and scientists, and chose for further study only those for which
the original assumptions and data could be understood in detail. They then
measured the accuracy of the projections - how well they predicted shortage
or surplus. Their overall conclusion is that the predictions were valid for
ONE YEAR! That's right, one year. Some, particularly those of a single
discipline, were a little better, and some were much worse."

   The point I infer from the above commentary is that such predictions are
exceedingly unreliable and the status of the job market is evidently a
function of many subtle factors. Apparently the usual factors weighted by
manpower researchers are simply not very good indicators.

    That said, we can always guess :-).

    Since your field is mathematics, as a benchmark indicator of the
mathematics job market I would suggest the number of applicants per employer
at the AMS annual meeting. I would prefer, of course, applicants per position
but that data is not completely available. Here are the numbers:

1966 - .8
1967 - .7
1968 - 1.4
1969 - 2.5
1970 - 3.3
1971 - 4.5
1972 - 8.7
1973 - 8.9
1974 - 10.2
1975 - 7.6
1976 - 5.8
1977 - 5.1
1978 - 4.4
1979 - 2.4
1980 - 1.5
1981 - 1.5
1982 - 1.3
1983 - 1.2
1984 - 1.4
1985 - 1.1
1986 - 1.0
1987 - 1.6
1988 - 1.6
1989 - 2.1
1990 - 2.5
1991 - 4.7
1992 - don't have this, anyone?

    I make no particular comment except to note that over the time period
for which data is available the job market seems to have a ten year cycle.
The job market turned down quickly at the beginning of the '70s and bottomed
out in 1974. The market remained sluggish until 1980. It then became quite
good until 1989 when it took a rapid downturn. Judging by the historical
time constant of the system I would guess that the bottom of this cycle
has not yet been reached. More significantly though, the recovery time
for the 1970s slump was more than five years. This would suggest that the
current job market won't really recover until the *end* of the nineties.




                                 John Tolman