Kevin Shih

The economist job market is up and running!  Last year the economics job market was the toughest in recent memory, as JOE listings were down 20%.  This was below even Covid levels.   A bit of good news for PhD economists this year in that I am noticing some green shoots in my discussions with employers!  And, in the data, we have a bit of good news as well: JOE listings are up 5.5% over this time last year (see below). Under the hood is where it gets interesting, however: **Full-time US academic jobs: +14.4%. Liberal arts colleges +16.1%, universities with graduate programs +13.8%. The segment that took the biggest hit last year is leading the recovery. **Full-time academic jobs outside the US: -12%. The rebound so far seems to be a domestic story. **Nonacademic jobs: +7.5% overall.  Yet, this hides a ton of heterogeneity. Consulting/research +21.6%, Banking/finance/industry -25%, US federal government: -44.4%. A side note is that for my entire career, the federal agencies were a stabilizer of this market, the last few years we have seen this buffer disappear. At this point, a candidate might ask: how should I respond to all this news?  Considering the data and my chats with people around several markets, I would still turn to the science.  Back when I was on the market it was difficult too (at least for me…I had 1 interview from 150 applications!).  The next year we studied the search market (paper downloadable here: ideas.repec.org/p/feb/natura…). We compared a boom market to a bust market through the lens of optimal search across multiple markets. Candidates adjust on two margins: which markets they enter, and how many applications they send into each. In busts, we found graduates of elite programs broadened their search down the academic ladder, graduates of lower-ranked programs shifted toward the business sector, and employers everywhere raised their hiring standards. So far the data in 2026-27 is neither a boom nor the bust in our paper, it is both at once.  Today academia is loosening while government has effectively closed and finance has tightened.  Even with those changes, my advice is no different than it was back then: adjust both margins.  This means that you should re-enter markets you may have written off.  This is because the academic window is wider than many feared, especially at liberal arts colleges. In addition, perhaps redirect applications from DC toward consulting. In the end, the deepest lesson for me remains:  there is no “the market,” we live in the world of “many markets.”  Treat this like a portfolio problem, and thus the key question of the day is “how are YOUR markets doing?”