The Academic WorkForce Survey has been conducted every two years since 1986. Between March and June 2018, researchers contacted 797 physics and astronomy departments (including 39 astronomy-only departments) that award a bachelor's degree or higher in physics or astronomy. Responses were received from 720 institutions, a 90% response rate. This…

In any academic department, faculty members retire or leave for a variety of reasons, and new faculty members are hired to replace departing faculty or fill newly created positions. This report focuses on departures, retirements, recruitments, and new hires in physics and astronomy departments. In our Academic Workforce Surveys, we collect the…

This report provides a comprehensive overview of the representation and participation of women in physics and astronomy fields. The report describes the representation of women in high school physics enrollment, physics and astronomy degree completions, and faculty employment. In addition, it examines the representation of minority women at some…

Women's representation in physics lags behind most other STEM disciplines. Currently, women make up about 13% of faculty members in all physics degree-granting departments, and there are physics departments with no women faculty members at all. These two data points are often cited as evidence of a lack of equity for women. In this article,…

Between March and July 2010, each of the 796 departments that awarded at least a bachelor's degree in physics or astronomy were contacted by e-mail, mail, and certified mail. Follow-up contacts were made for departments that had not yet responded. Responses were received from 744 departments (93%). The percentage of women among physics…

The United States is becoming more and more diverse, but the representation of some minority groups in physics and astronomy lags behind. Although 13% of the US population is African American or black, and 17% is Hispanic (US Census), the representation of these two groups in physics and astronomy is much lower. For this reason, African Americans…

This report describes how the representation of women in physics has changed, presenting data comparing the representation of women in physics to the representation of women in other fields and in academics overall. Highlights include: an increasingly large number of girls have some exposure to physics by taking it in high school; women's…

During the spring of 2004, the Statistical Research Center (SRC) of the American Institute of Physics sent a questionnaire to all 797 degree-granting physics and astronomy departments in the US. The purpose of this questionnaire, "The Academic Workforce Survey," was to determine the number of faculty positions in physics and astronomy, the number…

This report issued by the American Institute of Physics presents data on various aspects of the physics academic workforce. For the school year 1997-98, the institute measured the number of physics faculty, number of women faculty, turnover rates, retirement rates, new hires, frozen positions, and faculty recruitment efforts. Data suggest that the…

Despite years of continued growth, women's participation in physics remains among the lowest of any scientific field. The issue is of great concern to many in the scientific community, spawning talks at conferences, data collection efforts, and speculation about the causes of women's low participation in physics. Although women's participation in…