Struck by this being an "ominous sign for the economy" because "Earning a Ph.D. in economics has long been a reliable path to affluence and prestige. Not anymore." Why was it a reliable path? Why weren't history jobs disappearing an ominous sign? Mini thread Gift: www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/b...
The idea that there are so many econ tt jobs because there are a large number of majors is laughable
🙃 Why wouldn't job satisfaction be high? They're paid nearly double what the rest of us make. This is a key reason academic union campaigns struggle with economists.
"Tech companies also have grown stingier, and their need for high-level economists — once seemingly insatiable — has waned." I have known about issues in tech sector hiring for over a year, why did we expect it to be any different for economists?
"But by the 2023 academic year, the market was wobbly again — about 20 percent fewer positions advertised on the main American Economic Association jobs board — as tech companies and universities shifted into austerity mode." Exactly, so this is not really new on the tech company front
"...the finalists for an assistant economics professor position in the university’s public policy school were already assistant professors or postdoctoral fellows at other schools." So econ is just catching up to the rest of academia.
I desperately wish we could have a conversation about how the issues economists are facing now were perfected on the humanities and ethnic studies years ago. Being the golden child field with a conveyor belt to prestige and affluence will not protect you when authoritarians come knocking.
So, ya know, join a union or find ways to work collectively with your peers to push back. Be cool earning less and advocating for adjuncts in other fields to have full-time work.
We must see that our lives, our struggles and successes, are bound up in each other. What does collective action look like if you stop being optimistic your discipline's market will improve and instead think about academia as a whole?
Academic models of individual success undermine our habits of solidarity thinking. It’s so hard to get some people to see the big picture.
Why can I only like and repost this once. I wish I could *LIKE INTENSIFIES*
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Wait, this wasn’t already the case in Econ??
It was but I think the argument is now it's widespread at even high-status departments?
Ah, I see. What will happen to the economists now that they are treated like the rest of us. Apart from getting twice our pay, I mean.
That was theme of every additional paragraph. Now they're just like everyone else, but still with higher pay.
Gosh, that must be terrible to have your field so undervalued
This feels especially telling in a shouldn't-the-psychic-have-known-I-was-coming kind of sense.
Did they even … do research on this? Who teaches the big econ classes
Especially at the places they seem to be talking about
HAHAHAHA You are right. This is the funniest thing I've read in awhile.
OMGGGG I really try to be empathetic to the STEM folks experiencing these cuts - but it's really hard not to think about how the humanities are always first on the chopping block like in a perpetual state of precarity.
This one seems among the least ominous to me!
Amen.
“The economy” here being narrowly defined as “the system by which economists make their house payments.”
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I like their assumption that the market will bounce back magically.
Some people are quite optimistic
Ominous sign for the economist economy, maybe.
I'm even open to a discussion of why a field that normally has all the power in the social sciences having fewer jobs means this economy is going down. But you would need to acknowledge their power, why they used to have guaranteed jobs, why they haven't had to argue for their value, etc.