Universities are losing lots of money this year. Even those schools with a sizeable endowment are very restricted in how those funds can be used, and the result is that many places will have hiring freezes. This is surely going to have an immediate impact in the jobs market in mathematics, at every level. In a usual year, Chicago hires as many as ten Dickson instructors (our named postdoctoral position). This year, I find it hard to imagine that we would hire half that number. In part, this is because we have moved to protect a number of our final year postdocs by extending their position for another year, although if enough other places do something similar then next year is going to be tough as well.
There are rumors that a number of places (including really top places) are not going to admit any graduate students in mathematics next year, and that others will have at the very least significantly smaller classes. I fully expect that we will have an incoming class but I don’t know how large it is going to be.
Does your department expect to reduce (significantly or moderately) your postdoc hiring this year? What about tenure track lines or graduate students? Let me know! During the last financial crisis, both the Simons foundation and the NSF (via the stimulus bill) had a real effect by adding more money to the postdoc pool — hopefully something like that will happen again.
The CRM plans to hire more than the usual number of postdocs for Sept 2021. (Deadline tomorrow!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUeLTZp-Dig
Notre Dame will have a slightly smaller incoming graduate class, but that’s less due to the pandemic then the fact that our yield was much higher than we expected over the last couple of years. We will hire at least two tenure-stream faculty members. I’m not yet sure what our postdoc situation will be.
MSU still plans to hire postdocs this year: https://www.mathjobs.org/jobs/list/16579/. I’m not sure, but expect the number will be roughly the same as usual.
Regarding federal stimulus, there are (at least) two proposed acts before congress about scientific research funding. There is an AMS page with information about them and how to contact your legislators about this:
https://www.ams.org/government/getinvolved-dc?_zs=urmiO1&_zl=tPE36#/
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This seems like a good place to advertise that we have several postdoc positions in Lyon, France
(1) http://www.umpa.ens-lyon.fr/actualites/post-doctorant-in-mathematics-for-2021-2023
(2) https://milyon.universite-lyon.fr/postdoctoral-positions-2021-2023–130160.kjsp?RH=1571748911317
The MPS division of the Simons Foundation has made a substantial commitment to support postdocs and new hires in the areas it covers, math, theoretical physics and theoretical computer science, but its restricted to leading NYC area universities, see the announcement on their website in September. Perhaps your students can apply there
Because of the pandemic, a lot of “soft money” in mathematics was not spent: conferences that were cancelled or moved on line, visits that did not take place, etc. I very much hope that these funds can be channelled towards creating new postdoc positions, to alleviate shortages at least in the coming year. This seems to be what is happening in Canada, where the three institutes are offering more postdoc positions than usual. It might be different in the US where, as I understand it, it is more complicated to convert soft funds into postdoc stipends.
And of course, how it will play out for permanent positions, which are a long term investment, could be quite different. I am worried about the transition from postdoc to tenure track positions, where the shortages could last well beyond the pandemic if things are not managed well by the universities.
I believe (unconfirmed) that Harvard is not offering any BP (postdoc) positions at all this year.