MOVING TO FRONT FROM OCTOBER 10: SEE SECOND UPDATE, BELOW.
UPDATE: It appears the APA has pulled the on-line version.
A couple of readers have sent me the link, for which my thanks. As expected, it's not a great October JFP, and one worries that some advertised positions with asterisks may yet disappear due to financial problems. I would, again, remind job seekers to be careful about the timing of their dissertation defense, since, as the saying goes, "PhDs go stale." (Just to be clear, I take it what the saying means is this: the farther you are from the year of your PhD without a tenure-track position, the more unfavorable inferences hiring departments will draw about your qualifications. It's obviously not a rational inference to draw in the midst of an economic crisis, but there it is.) Unless your advisors tell you otherwise, I would not defend in December just for the sake of being able to say at the APA that you have defended; it is the responsibility of letter writers to indicate whether you will be done or not, and when. I would, to the extent possible, time defending closer to the time when you know if you have a job--or simply delay defending until next year if it looks like no job offers are materializing.
Thoughts from others on this issue? Signed comments strongly preferred, though I will entertain anonymous comments from students as long as their e-mail is visible when they submit the comment (it won't appear).
UDPATE: As two readers have now pointed out, the on-line ads go well beyond the 250+ ads in the October JFP (indeed, they go up to #500 or so). Many of these will presumably be in the November JFP. It is possible, then, that the November JFP will make up for a somewhat weaker October JFP. Let us hope so.
NOVEMBER 12 UPDATE: I've now seen the November JFP, and while I haven't done a careful count of how many ads also appeared in October, overall it looks pretty bad. If anyone has done the tallies, please post them in the comments. I fear this is a pretty grim landscape; I hope faculty and departments will go out of their way this year to support their students on the job market and find ways to extend funding, when necessary, given the difficult job situation.
