A report on the jobs advertised in the 2012–13 MLA Job Information List (JIL) is now available on the MLA Web site. After inching higher each of the past two years, the number of jobs advertised in the JIL fell by 93 (7.5%) in the English edition and by 26 (2.3%) in foreign language edition in 2012–13. For the fourth year in a row, and the fourth time in the thirty-eight-year history of the JIL counts, more jobs were advertised in the February, April, and Summer issues than in the October and December issues. Read the full report for more information, including figures charting trends in the data since 1975–76 and breakdowns by tenure status and rank.
Report on the 2012–13 Job Information List
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Articles on the report, including comments from Rosemary Feal, appear in Inside Higher Ed and the Chronicle of Higher Education.
This report is very illuminating. Thanks to the MLA for compiling. I encourage colleagues to consult figures 4 and 5 (pages 7-8), which show a statistically significant shift of tenure-track jobs toward non-tenure-track positions since the start of the financial crisis. Of particular note is that the drop in percentage of tenure-track job openings 2009-13 is nearly equivalent to the rise in non-tenure-track openings over that period. The trend is particularly worrisome on the Foreign Language side of the list where tenure-track jobs constitute barely half of all positions posted. A bad situation continues to get worse.