This report analyzes trends in the career paths of doctoral course graduates in Japan who majored in the humanities and social sciences. The main characteristic is that the percentage of those employed as university lecturers is about 45% in the field of humanities and social sciences, which is higher than in the field of sciences, where the figure is 19.7%. On the other hand, among those who took up postdoctoral positions immediately after completing their doctoral courses, the proportion remaining employed in postdoctoral positions decreases over time, reaching 15.1% in the humanities and 9.3% in social sciences by the time five years have elapsed since the completion of their doctoral courses, while the proportion employed as full-time university lecturers five years after the completion of their doctoral courses increases to 56.6% in the humanities and 74.4% in social sciences. This shows that the academic career path from a postdoctoral position to becoming a full-time university lecturer is open to them. However, among those who became part-time university lecturers immediately after finishing graduate school, the proportion of those who were still in such positions five years after the completion of their doctoral courses remained high, at 65.7% in the humanities and 46.1% in social sciences.
