2020-2021 APSA eJobs Report: the Political Science Job Market

Abstract

Data show that 99% of political science or government departments overall reported moving classes exclusively online in Spring 2020; while August 2020 marked the start of hybrid and in-person learning throughout the US. Like 2019-2020, in 2020-2021 job postings declined across the country, down about 2% from 2019-2020 and about 20% from 2018-2019. The sharpest downturns were in April and May, but an increase of job postings in June and July could mark the beginning of an upward trend. Positions for three major subfields, for Comparative Politics, American Government and Politics, and International Relations continued to decline, while the proportion of “Other” and “Open” positions advertised increased. For 2020-2021 most (48.2%) job postings were (junior) Non-Tenure Track positions, and there were increases in the proportion of international positions, and in positions in the West, the South, and the Northeast in the United States.