The Collapse of the Econ PhD Job Market

Summary

For decades, a doctorate in economics was a golden ticket. It promised a path to tenure, or at worst, a lucrative role at a central bank, think tank, or tech firm.Not anymore.The economics job market is in freefall, and the profession’s own data proves it.Unlike most fields, economics has a bizarrely centralized hiring ritual. Once a year, in the fall, every employer posts openings at the same time. Every candidate applies at the same time. The entire profession runs through one clearinghouse: the American Economic Association’s “Job Openings for Economists” (JOE). This makes economics PhD market uniquely measurable, and the numbers are brutal. ShareThe JOE data shows few jobs in 2022, fewer still in 2023, and fewer still in 2024. This year’s trajectory suggests 2025 will be even worse: Extrapolating, the 2025 market looks set to bottom out around 1,000 openings:I think my freehand projection is a very conservative approximation of reality—actual numbers may come in slightly higher or lower, of course, but this reasonably looks like what the market is on track for, barring a miracle. Just three years ago, there were 1,477 openings. The fall to ~1,000 this year will represent a 32% collapse.Most economics PhD students aren’t looking for just any job, though, they want a tenure-track position in academia. According to polling data from the 2025 Webinar on the Economics PhD Job Market, 94% of candidates from the past four cohorts reported being “very interested” or “somewhat interested” in becoming an assistant professor, dwarfing all non-academic options.Subsetting the JOE data to permanent academic positions (tenure-track or tenured) yields a nearly identical trend: openings dropped from 631 in 2022 to about 400 in 2025, a 35% decline over three years: Again, please forgive my Microsoft Paint skills:The JOE data is confirmed by Econ Job Market (EJM) data, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) whose stated mission is “to improve the flow of information in the job market for academic ...