Economics Job Market Tracker: Visualizing JOE Posting Trends 2015-2025
The interactive visualizations below show how the economics job market has evolved from 2015 to 2025 using data downloaded from JOE on the AEA website. This is following work done by lots of folks, most notably John Cawley’s reports on thr state of the market.
I wanted an updated sense of these graphs and provide the code and data publicly.
The Data
The dataset includes over 14,000 job postings spanning 11 academic years. Each posting includes the date it became active on JOE, which allows us to track the timing of hiring activity throughout each academic year cycle.
The visualizations start from calendar week 31 (early August), which marks the beginning of the academic hiring season for most economics positions. [-1-] [-1-] The data was scraped from JOE and processed using Python (pandas, plotly). The visualizations are fully interactive - you can: 1) Hover to see exact values 2) Click and drag to zoom 3) Double-click to reset the view 4) Click legend items to show/hide specific years
Cumulative Job Postings by Week
This first chart shows the cumulative number of job postings over the course of each academic year. You can hover over the lines to see exact values, zoom in on specific time periods, and click on years in the legend to show/hide them.
Rolling 4-Week Flow of New Postings
This second chart smooths out weekly volatility by showing the rolling 4-week sum of new job postings. This makes it easier to identify when hiring activity peaks and troughs.
Finance Jobs Only
The visualizations below show the same analysis but filtered for finance positions only. Finance jobs represent approximately 9% of all JOE postings. [-2-] [-2-] This is based on JEL code ‘G - Financial Economics’
Cumulative Finance Job Postings
Key Observations for Finance Jobs:
- Finance postings have declined from ~150 per year (2015-2018) to ~100 per year (2022-2024)
- The pandemic impact was proportionally similar to the overall market (~27% decline)
- Unlike the overall market, finance jobs haven’t recovered to pre-pandemic levels
- Peak hiring activity follows a similar pattern to the overall market (weeks 38-42)
Summary Statistics
Here’s a breakdown by academic year:
All Jobs
| Year | Total Postings | Avg per Week | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 1,543 | 49.8 | |
| 2016 | 1,436 | 49.5 | |
| 2017 | 1,517 | 52.3 | |
| 2018 | 1,555 | 48.6 | Peak year |
| 2019 | 1,451 | 46.8 | |
| 2020 | 1,134 | 39.1 | Pandemic year |
| 2021 | 1,390 | 38.6 | Recovery |
| 2022 | 1,502 | 46.9 | |
| 2023 | 1,297 | 41.8 | |
| 2024 | 1,221 | 37.0 | |
| 2025 | 433 | 39.4 | Partial year |
Finance Jobs Only
| Year | Finance Postings | % of Total |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 153 | 9.9% |
| 2016 | 131 | 9.1% |
| 2017 | 138 | 9.1% |
| 2018 | 153 | 9.8% |
| 2019 | 137 | 9.4% |
| 2020 | 103 | 9.1% |
| 2021 | 123 | 8.8% |
| 2022 | 103 | 6.9% |
| 2023 | 93 | 7.2% |
| 2024 | 102 | 8.3% |
| 2025 | 46 | 10.6% |
Federal Reserve & Bank Regulator Jobs
The visualizations below show positions at the Federal Reserve System (Board and regional banks), FDIC, and OCC. These represent approximately 2% of all JOE postings. [-3-] [-3-] I define these as any institution matching: ‘Federal Reserve Bank’, ‘Federal Reserve Board’, ‘Federal Reserve System’, ‘Board of Governors’, ‘Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’, ‘Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’
There have been ZERO Federal Reserve or bank regulator postings in 2025 so far, compared to the typical 25-33 per year.
Cumulative Fed/Regulator Job Postings
Fed/Regulator Jobs by Year
| Year | Fed/Regulator Postings | % of Total |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 30 | 1.9% |
| 2016 | 33 | 2.3% |
| 2017 | 31 | 2.0% |
| 2018 | 29 | 1.9% |
| 2019 | 32 | 2.2% |
| 2020 | 28 | 2.5% |
| 2021 | 24 | 1.7% |
| 2022 | 29 | 1.9% |
| 2023 | 18 | 1.4% |
| 2024 | 29 | 2.4% |
| 2025 | 0 | 0.0% |
Last updated: October 8, 2025
