Explore jobs
Find specific jobs
Explore careers
Explore professions
Best companies
Explore companies
Job outlook for humanities professors in the United States
Humanities professor job growth summary. After extensive research, interviews, and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:
The projected humanities professor job growth rate is 12% from 2018-2028.
About 159,400 new jobs for humanities professors are projected over the next decade.
Humanities professor salaries have increased 8% for humanities professors in the last 5 years.
There are over 118,611 humanities professors currently employed in the United States.
There are 12,083 active humanities professor job openings in the US.
The average humanities professor salary is $88,636.
Are humanities professor jobs in demand?
Humanities professor job and salary trends over time
Humanities professor jobs over time
Humanities professor job growth rate over time
| Year | # of jobs | % of population |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 118,611 | 0.04% |
| 2020 | 121,777 | 0.04% |
| 2019 | 123,443 | 0.04% |
| 2018 | 122,305 | 0.04% |
| 2017 | 120,111 | 0.04% |
Average humanities professor salary over time
Humanities professor salary by year
| Year | Avg. salary | Hourly rate | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | $88,636 | $42.61 | +0.7% |
| 2025 | $87,981 | $42.30 | +2.9% |
| 2024 | $85,541 | $41.13 | +2.6% |
| 2023 | $83,382 | $40.09 | +1.9% |
| 2022 | $81,867 | $39.36 | +2.8% |
Humanities professor jobs by state
Most common states for humanities professors
| Rank | State | Population | # of jobs | Employment/ 1000ppl |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | District of Columbia | 693,972 | 80 | 12% |
| 2 | Vermont | 623,657 | 49 | 8% |
| 3 | West Virginia | 1,815,857 | 104 | 6% |
| 4 | Colorado | 5,607,154 | 286 | 5% |
| 5 | Oregon | 4,142,776 | 210 | 5% |
| 6 | South Dakota | 869,666 | 46 | 5% |
| 7 | New York | 19,849,399 | 785 | 4% |
| 8 | Virginia | 8,470,020 | 380 | 4% |
| 9 | Utah | 3,101,833 | 130 | 4% |
| 10 | Mississippi | 2,984,100 | 118 | 4% |
| 11 | Nebraska | 1,920,076 | 86 | 4% |
| 12 | Rhode Island | 1,059,639 | 38 | 4% |
| 13 | Alaska | 739,795 | 32 | 4% |
| 14 | Pennsylvania | 12,805,537 | 402 | 3% |
| 15 | New Jersey | 9,005,644 | 252 | 3% |
| 16 | Wisconsin | 5,795,483 | 172 | 3% |
| 17 | Kentucky | 4,454,189 | 153 | 3% |
| 18 | Louisiana | 4,684,333 | 141 | 3% |
| 19 | Maine | 1,335,907 | 41 | 3% |
| 20 | Montana | 1,050,493 | 27 | 3% |
Humanities Professor job outlook: Expert opinions
Our panel of humanities professor experts
Kean University
North Carolina State University
University of Maine
Ferrum College
Skidmore College
Ashford University
University of South Florida
Hanover College
What general advice would you give to a Humanities Professor?
Alex Holte PhD: My advice for someone new to the field of academia is to learn time management skills early and learn what type of service work you find interesting and would like to contribute to. From there, learn how to say “no” to opportunities that may not align with your goals as well. I feel a lot of new professors tend to find the need to be involved in everything, which can result in burning out later in their career.
What Humanities Professor skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?
Alex Holte PhD: I would say being able to work with AI may be something that is more important in the next 3-5 years. Right now it’s a new technology and people are just now learning how to integrate it in the workplace, but I feel it is possible the future workforce of tomorrow will necessitate some form of being able to use AI technology.
What will help Humanities Professors increase their earning potential?
Alex Holte PhD: When you are starting out at any career, it is important to negotiate your salary. Many candidates feel that they have to accept their first offer, but in reality, at many jobs, there is some room for negotiation. Be mindful however, to not request a salary that is much higher than what is being offered as they may feel like a compromise would not be possible and move on to the next candidate.
What general advice would you give to a Humanities Professor?
Mia Fiore Ph.D.: First, I would tell all students that it is VERY different from teaching k-12. Unlike K-12, you are not placed in a school with a teaching job upon graduation; teaching in higher education is one of the most competitive fields, period. The next difference is that you are expected to be an expert/ master of your field. If you're also willing to accept that you will likely have to work as an adjunct professor (for low pay) first, then go for it! Teaching in higher education is the most rewarding job, especially for people who love learning.
What Humanities Professor skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?
Mia Fiore Ph.D.: Awareness and familiarity with technology has become more important, and it will continue to be more important in the next 3-5 years. With everything from peer-reviewed journals available online, to AI, technology is an important part of higher education.
What will help Humanities Professors increase their earning potential?
Mia Fiore Ph.D.: Maximize your salary potential by teaching at a state school- if you do you can join the PSLF program and after ten years, your student loans will be forgiven.
What general advice would you give to a Humanities Professor?
Justin Whitehill Ph.D.: Perseverance pays off. Its worth it to pursue the career you want and not settle and be unhappy.
What Humanities Professor skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?
Justin Whitehill Ph.D.: In the area of genetics and genomics, the identification of areas of the genome that can be CRISPR’d and used to add an immediate benefit is going to be very important as every cropping system races to make genome editing a reality. AI will likely play a huge role in predicting genes/regions of the genome that will provide the biggest benefits.
What will help Humanities Professors increase their earning potential?
Justin Whitehill Ph.D.: I wouldn’t know, I’m a professor.
Jane Kuandre
Associate ProfessorWhat general advice would you give to a Humanities Professor?
Jane Kuandre: My advice for someone looking to pursue a career in academia would be to focus on building a strong publication record, developing a network of collaborators, and continuously seeking opportunities for professional development.
What Humanities Professor skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?
Jane Kuandre: Some essential skills for success in academia include critical thinking, effective communication, time management, and the ability to work both independently and collaboratively.
What will help Humanities Professors increase their earning potential?
Jane Kuandre: Networking is crucial for career advancement in academia as it allows individuals to establish collaborations, gain access to resources, and stay updated on the latest research trends.
Dr. Elizabeth Neiman
Director of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies ProgramUniversity of Maine
Ethnic, Cultural Minority, Gender, And Group Studies
What general advice would you give to a Humanities Professor?
Dr. Elizabeth Neiman: Students interested in enhancing their program of study with a WGS minor just 3 additional courses to take in WGS so as to complete a minor. Nursing students who have taken advantage of this opportunity report to me that they are excited about the perspectives that WGS studies provides them and that they feel more prepared than ever to begin a career in Nursing.
What Humanities Professor skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?
Dr. Elizabeth Neiman: I can reflect better on how I'd guide students to think about the work they do at UMaine in Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies so as to prepare for potential careers.
What will help Humanities Professors increase their earning potential?
Dr. Elizabeth Neiman: Rather than answer your questions, I'll give you some background information: Since becoming Director of the Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies program at UMaine in fall 2022, I have been doing a great deal of outreach to faculty in other departments across the university.
Carl Franklin JD, PhD
Chair, School of Business and TechnologyFerrum College
Criminal Justice And Corrections
What will help Humanities Professors increase their earning potential?
Carl Franklin JD, PhD: Until a decade ago, language skills in most local and state law enforcement were a luxury to have, but as our population rapidly changes, these skills are becoming more mainstream and necessary. Start to build language skills in the areas that make the most sense for your geographic area. Those skills will make you a better criminal justice professional. In addition, returning to the behavioral sciences for a strong foundation in criminal justice skills is once again a requirement to become a true professional in the field. Understanding culture, social organization, psychology, criminology, and many other disciplines improves the effectiveness of criminal justice professionals at all levels. This return to the roots of the original criminal justice programs has created a full-circle balance from those times when behavioral sciences were abandoned in favor of business, STEM, and related disciplines. The simple truth is that we need to understand people more often than how a computer works.
Aurelie Matheron
Assistant Professor of FrenchSkidmore College
Romance Languages, Literatures, And Linguistics
What general advice would you give to a Humanities Professor?
Aurelie Matheron: Present yourself as a professional in your cover letter and interviews. The people who interview you will look at you as a future colleague and not a student. Use the past “I” to show what the future “I” will do. Meaning: in your interviews, say “I have developed X courses/projects and I have acquired X skills useful for a collaborative project at your institution. For instance, one project I will develop is XYZ.” You show your experience/expertise and how you will be using your skills. Don’t dwell too much on the “past I” and, I’d say, don’t use the past “we” => “at my former institution, we would do X or Z.” => this shows that you still view yourself as part of that community and don’t project yourself at your new institution. Once you have the job: observe the dynamics of your new work place. Meet with colleagues who also recently got a job at your institution. They will help you navigate the first year.
What Humanities Professor skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?
Aurelie Matheron: Leadership: you will be in positions of leading a program/department. Learn from current chairs by observing their own skills during meetings and moments of decision. Collaboration: develop interpersonal and interprofessional relationships that will allow you to build collaborative projects (interdepartmental courses, for instance).
What will help Humanities Professors increase their earning potential?
Aurelie Matheron: Do some research online about how much someone earns at your stage of the career. If there is a significant gap, point out (diplomatically) that, because of your extensive experience in XYZ, you would like to get a X% increase in your salary. Be reasonable: if you want a 3% increase, ask for 5% (not 10% or more). Justify your negotiation: why should they pay me more? What experience can I show them to justify my request? If you have a higher offer from another place, you can say that “I have received another generous offer and would like to know about the possibility for matching that offer.” Salary is not the only thing you can negotiate: office space, computer/laptop, sabbaticals, course release, etc. Again, be reasonable: if you think you are entitled to XYZ requests, you also have to show why.
Fabio Lanza
ProfessorAshford University
History
What general advice would you give to a Humanities Professor?
Fabio Lanza: I tell them not to expect that they can achieve the same, old-style academic career (like mine, for example). A tenure-track job in a research university to be clear. Those jobs exist but they are becoming rarer and rarer. I also tell them that if they forecast incurring in serious (or even non-serious) debt in order to get a PhD, they should not do it. They should not pursue that path at all. In the program, they should take all the chances they have to learn new skills, including skills that don't seem directly related to an academic career.
What Humanities Professor skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?
Fabio Lanza: To put it bluntly, if you want to make money, this is really not the career for you.
What will help Humanities Professors increase their earning potential?
Fabio Lanza: Difficult to say, given how quickly things change. Digital humanities was and still is fashionable and important. Public history (museum, exhibitions, outreach). And teaching.
What skills will help Humanities Professors earn the most?
Lee Braver: Let's see-an M.B.A., the ability to pick winning lottery numbers, being repelled by the humanities so that one goes into business-those would be pretty useful for making money. No one should go into academia for the money, not just not for wealth but even for a comfortable living, which is becoming more difficult to achieve in America in general. It is nearly impossible to make a living as an adjunct professor, which is where the profession is heading. There are many good-paying jobs, but those tend to congregate at the elite schools, the ones that emphasize research the most, and these are the fewest and hardest to get. Worse-paying jobs are also hard to come by, and the competition is just getting stiffer as more Ph.D.'s get dumped into the market each year which is itself accreting all those who did not land jobs in the previous years. At many institutions, raises are minimal since jobs are so hard to come by, and there's little else that rewards a humanities Ph.D. The only way to get a substantial raise is to get a credible offer from another institution and hope that yours wants to keep you enough to overbid them; otherwise, you're stuck, especially after getting tenure, and they know it. That's why tenure is called "golden handcuffs," though I think a better name might be something like velvet handcuffs, given gold's connotation of wealth.
Alejandra Rodriguez-Villar Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of SpanishHanover College
Department of Modern Languages
What skills stand out on Humanities Professor resumes?
Alejandra Rodriguez-Villar Ph.D.: Something that stands out in any resume is the ability to speak two or more languages. If we are thinking of medievalists and early modern professionals, having a good command of romance languages and other European languages will be a great asset without any type of doubt. In any case, for anybody interested in history, it is critical to know the languages spoken in the studied space and those in the surrounding areas as an excellent way to understand and monitor mutual influences. Likewise, grads with a major in medieval, early modern, or general history, will have more opportunities in the job market if they show imagination and creativity as skills in their resumes. Unfortunately, we can only travel in time with our minds; being able to supply with our imagination and creativity what we cannot see presently is extremely important for a good historian. We often count on scarce, disconnected pieces of information, and having the necessary imagination to sense the possible connections is essential to develop a meticulous methodology to support our research findings. Talking about methods, if it is true that we need to be very imaginative to set the first steps to reconstruct history, we also need to be very systematic to produce a rigorous vision that we can call history and not fiction!
What soft skills should all Humanities Professors possess?
Alejandra Rodriguez-Villar Ph.D.: As professionals with expertise in the past, our best contribution is to help people see history from a non-presentist point of view. Presentism tends to judge history with our present values and morals, which highly prevents us from understanding the studied period itself. While this type of judgment is debunked at a synchronic level -we don't apply our values spatially- we still see examples of this perspective diachronically applied when comparing different periods to ours. Judging history this way is unfair to the period we are analyzing. It can also lead us to dismiss significant advancements as just backward attitudes because, of course, everything that happened before us will look "obsolete" to our eyes. Although we can see a particular event in history as something negative according to our standards, it could have represented a major step ahead for the world at that moment. So, for professionals who deal with previous ages, connecting humans across time and not only across space is a priceless skill nowadays. With the vast increase in scholarship on the past, we will need more professionals able to transport people from one period to the other and help them understand its importance in the whole picture of a specific human group or the whole of humankind. This is what will allow us to value our present correctly. The most precious soft skill for everyone is often to try to understand before judging. Connectors are a great source of creativity and growth.
What hard/technical skills are most important for Humanities Professors?
Alejandra Rodriguez-Villar Ph.D.: For Medievalists and Early Modern experts, depending on their area of expertise, it is imperative to know the skills they will need in their research, such as paleography, to give an example. In general terms, it is crucial to understand the age at which we live for all those who want to have a career in this field. We are in a moment when the "digital" adjective is being applied to everything, and this is an excellent tool for anyone interested in the past. Digitality is a new platform that allows us to present information in a much more complex and attractive way, and more importantly, to reach many more people interested in knowing how we got here. From being able to contribute to digital repositories, turning into digital format documents of any type, to being able to work with different programs to find and process information, such as corpus analysis, being acquainted with these new technologies will be the feature that will set professionals apart from more analogical fellows.
What skills will help Humanities Professors earn the most?
Alejandra Rodriguez-Villar Ph.D.: If we focus on the future, we are observing a merging between the sciences and the humanities. We are experiencing the rise of what C.P. Snow called "the third culture." And it makes sense because, with our current ability to process extensive amounts of information, we are opening doors to study history and the past in many disciplines from a more holistic perspective. People in the humanities and the sciences are getting closer in methodologies, technologies, and languages. Anybody wanting to have a flourishing career will need to have an interdisciplinary education that will enable them to cross-disciplinary boundaries. While scientists are getting more acquainted with disciplines like philosophy or literature (for instance, narrative medicine), humanists need to become familiar with statistics, coding, or cognitive sciences. With the rise of automation, humans who can see the whole picture will be more necessary than ever.