Job openings in anthropology have been gradually on the rise since the mid-1990's, and that trend seems to be continuing this year, say professors and graduate students in the field.
The number of academic jobs in anthropology increased for the third year in a row in 1999, the most recent year for which statistics are available, according to the American Anthropological Association. Its Anthropology Newsletter lists more than 90 percent of the job vacancies in anthropology departments at four-year colleges and universities in the United States. The number of job openings on and off the tenure track rose modestly, to 557 in 1999 from 539 in 1998, but were up sharply from 302 in 1996 -- a gain of about 84 percent.
"These are the most favorable numbers in nearly a decade," says Kathleen A. Terry-Sharp, director of academic relations at the association, which opened its annual meeting on Thursday in San Francisco. And although this year's job count has not yet been completed, it could be comparable to or higher than last year's.
On the face of it the numbers are encouraging because, according to the association, in 1999 there were academic job openings in anthropology for more than 90 percent of all new Ph.D.'s in the field. However, that's not to say that all those openings were filled by new Ph.D.'s.
"Part of the difficulty in anthropology," says Thomas McDade, an assistant professor of anthropology at Northwestern University, "is that the field is so diverse and the jobs are so specific that at any given point in time there could be hundreds of jobs out there, but only one or two that a particular candidate could actually apply for, given his or her geographical or theoretical focus."
Mr. McDade earned a Ph.D. from Emory University last year in biological anthropology and says he feels lucky to have landed a tenure-track job his first time on the market. "The idiosyncratic nature of the job-search process is such that in 1998 there could have been no jobs in my area of human biology," he says, "but there happened to be four."
Within the academy this year there seem to be more opportunities for specialists in linguistics and biological anthropology, say those in the field. "I suspect that there are more jobs for anthropological linguists than there are anthropological linguists," says Frank E. Poirier, chairman of the department of anthropology at Ohio State University. However, he's quick to add that "once those jobs fill up, that's it," because linguistics isn't an academic growth area.
Professors say they've also seen a growing demand for biological anthropologists who study genetics and mitochondrial DNA. Experts also expect that global concern about ecological threats will generate increasing interest in environmental anthropology, a sub-specialty within cultural anthropology.
Biological and cultural anthropologists seem to have an edge on the academic job market because they're not restricted to jobs within anthropology departments. Many biological anthropologists teach anatomy to pre-med students, while many cultural anthropologists teach ethnic-studies courses in other departments.
Some departments are doing a lot of hiring. Conrad Kottak, chairman of the department of anthropology at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, says he plans to hire several cultural anthropologists this year -- an environmental anthropologist, a specialist on the African diaspora, and a specialist in Caribbean-derived Latino populations within the United States. He is also seeking authorization to hire more than one biological anthropologist. Brett Williams, head of American University's anthropology department, says she plans to hire three people this year -- a physical anthropologist, an archaeologist, and a specialist in environmental justice -- but all three will be temporary positions.
Many chairmen predict their departments will grow in the next few years, but not by a lot. "We're probably almost as big as we're going to get," says Dean R. Snow, chairman of the 27-member anthropology department at Pennsylvania State University at University Park. "I don't think we'll ever be as big as Berkeley or U.C.L.A. or Michigan. It's just not in the cards for us."
A lot of new Ph.D.'s are finding jobs in academe, just not on the tenure track. Graduate students and professors say a growing number of anthropology Ph.D.'s -- especially in physical anthropology -- are taking one- or two-year postdoctoral fellowships before moving into tenure-track positions. "It's not yet required of physical anthropology Ph.D.'s, as it is in the hard sciences," says Mr. Poirier, "but I wouldn't be surprised if that happened."
Susan Gal, head of the anthropology department at the University of Chicago, notes that even in cultural and linguistic anthropology it is increasingly rare for a student to go directly from gaining a Ph.D. to a tenure-track job. Instead, she says, most graduates first spend a year or two in postdocs or temporary teaching positions. She is quick to point out, however, that postdocs and temporary positions don't mean that graduates are disqualified from getting tenure-track jobs down the line. "As few as eight years ago, if you took a postdoc you were in danger of somehow getting off the track of moving into regular academic positions. These days, it's not dangerous so much as something that's becoming routine."
Anthropology Ph.D.'s who want to look beyond the ivory tower are finding more and more opportunities, thanks to the booming national economy.
Mr. Poirier, the Ohio State chairman, estimates that 30 percent of his department's recent doctoral recipients took jobs outside academe. Back in 1997, the anthropology association says, 71 percent of Ph.D.'s in the field went into academe; today, roughly half do.
John W. Olsen, who heads the department of anthropology at the University of Arizona, reports a similar trend. He notes that 4 of his department's 14 doctoral recipients so far this year have accepted nonacademic jobs (6 took academic posts and 4 others are still searching). The anthropology association estimates that roughly half of recent doctoral recipients in the field will take jobs in government or the private sector.
So where are these government and industry jobs? Federal and state historic-preservation laws have led to more jobs for contract archaeologists -- who survey and excavate land slated for development -- in cultural-resources firms. Increasing globalization and racial and ethnic diversity are opening up new opportunities for cultural anthropologists in nongovernmental organizations, public-health organizations, and a variety of businesses, such as consulting, public-relations, and opinion-polling companies, to name but a few). Meanwhile, an increasing number of Ph.D.'s in the field are finding jobs in federal and state law-enforcement agencies, especially in forensic anthropology, and in private and government research laboratories as biological anthropologists.
Mr. Poirier is among those optimistic about the job market in anthropology: "We're inundated by undergraduates in our classes, which means that we hire virtually every graduate student we have to teach, which means that we let in more graduate students. Right now anthropology is enjoying a status and an acceptance that we haven't seen for many, many years," he says. "I think we'd damned well better enjoy the good times while they're here. I doubt they will last forever."
