Is anyone else noticing something of a scarcity of jobs in the academic job market at the moment??

In my field (law) there has been very few jobs advertised over the past few months. At first I blamed it on summer holidays, but now everyone is back at uni and the jobs still aren't appearing. Normally, jobs pop up now as faculty members may have left over the summer etc.

I'm wondering if universities are holding back recruitment until the RAE results are published, and consequently their budgets are decided.

I'm hoping the economic downturn is not having an impact!

Oooh, I've semi-noticed it too - all the jobs that are advertised in my area (Politics) are for senior staff, not early career. A couple of staff in my dept have mentioned that yes, its probably the RAE, that there is a backlog and that after Christmas things should get a bit more normal. My dept took on 6 new staff this summer, so I wouldn't say that there are no jobs, I just remember how slowly it takes them to advertise stuff.

One of our schools has just had a 50% cut in the teaching budget for this academic year, though that would have been used mostly for visiting lecturers rather than permanent posts. You get used to squeezes in teaching budgets, but never one that big. Not sure what the economic impact on recruitment of new students has been though, and the knock-on effect on college budgets. We're also undergoing an internal research review that will produce recommendations alongside the RAE results, so presumably things will change one way or another after that....

Other than last-minute resignations etc, I would imagine that most Universities have their staff in place by now. I seem to remember more vacancies last February-April. But I'm sure the RAE has a big role to play too - because if they bring in new staff (especially young staff with few publications - like us!) then doesn't that dilute their publication/staff ratio or something. And plus project applications etc are pushed to one side until the RAE is out of the way.

Interestingly, there are a lot of US jobs at the moment. Something I've noticed is their deadlines are for Oct-Dec, for a start next Aug-Oct. Chatting to my supervisor he said that UK Universities would never show that kind of foresight...

Another reason that has just dawned on me (doh) is that the pay increase for this year must be 2.5% or the rate of inflation (which ever is greater)...this will apparently 'floor' some universities (and I imagine underperforming departments will go under):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/sep/09/lecturerspay.inflation

@ Coastman, I think the RAE only expects entry-level lecturers to have 2 publications per year, so having newer staff doesn't have a negative effect on the actual rating as it's weighted to allow for that (well, that's what I've always thought anyway...).

Hopefully, it will just be RAE anticipation.