A Dismal Year for the Dismal Science?

According to a post on The Economist’s Free exchange blog, the academic job market in the dismal science is … well … somewhat dismal this year — enough so, anyway, that the American Economic Association has established a section on its Web site for canceled searches.

AEA director John Siegfried told The Economist that the number of new job listings this year dipped slightly to 2,881 from 2,914 last year. The bigger concern, however, is canceled searches. By December 28, 2008, a week before the annual meeting, about 5 percent of those advertised searches had already been shelved, Siegfried told the magazine, and economists and job seekers worry that some departments are just going through the motions and that more cancellations may be on the way.

In fact, an Economist reporter who attended the AEA annual meeting overheard one economics professor from a top university say that although his department was holding interviews, a candidate hoping to be hired would have to “walk on water.”