system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What the hell happened to the academic job market in the past ten years?

I've heard all of these mythical tales about the bygone era of 2001-2007, when new graduates, PhDs in hand, would get some postdoc fellowship straight out the gate, and go on to some tenure track position thereafter.

Nowadays, I see people graduating with PhDs from top ten universities with mile-long resumes who send out more than a hundred applications and still can't find a job.  I've been told that the financial crash in 2008 had something to do with it, but what exactly? What changed in university departments that led to the job market being so awful?  Why does it continue to remain awful?  Will it continue to remain awful?  Or do you reject the premise of my question, and conclude that the academic job market is just fine?

Mainly, I've heard about this in the humanities, since that's roughly where my field is.  I'm not sure how it is in the natural or social sciences.
gpt
(This is purely anecdotal; someone else can research the data and see whether these guesses are right.)

I would hypothesise two effects in the United States:

  * The Great Recession leads to an increase in unemployment in many industries.  Fewer jobs available to college graduates means more people go to grad school instead.  More people in grad school means, a few years later, more people with PhDs chasing the same number of positions.
  * The Great Recession, along with the ascendance of Tea Party or other anti-tax politicians, leads to a drop in state and federal revenues.  A drop in state revenues leads to less funding for public universities; a drop in federal revenues leads to less grant funding.  Less funding for universities means fewer new positions get created, and some retiring scholars are not replaced.  So there are fewer positions available for the PhDs to chase.