I can think of one reason via experience. I have a law degree and practiced law for 13 years before stopping when we had our second child. My wife is a physician and we could not both maintain our careers and fulfill our parental responsibilities. I taught at a small school for two years which fell apart in 2015. I then got a masters in US History. Since then I have been looking for work and have applied for dozens of jobs. I cannot even generally get an interview even for middle and high school positions. It is difficult to get substitute appointments. I was told for one long term sub position (January to May) there were over 100 applicants. I went to a job fair at the University of Virginia which was overflowing with history and English majors. I believe there were more applicants there than teaching positions in the entire state (a little exaggeration here, but not that much).

I keep hearing about the shortage of good teachers, which is true for math and the hard sciences. But in the humanities there is a glut. I can see why so many are depressed. Fortunately for me, I get a rare opportunity, the ability to spend a lot of time with my young children. My youngest is 5 now though and will be in school fulltime in the fall. I would like to get back to fulltime employment but that seems unlikely in the near future. I created a blog (some articles posted here) because history is such a fascinating subject to research and write about. It is discouraging to say the least that with a passion and significant educational background that I can't even get interviews.

I hope this garners a lot of discussion and visibility, not here but in the academic world in general. I keep coming back to this thread thinking of what to comment, but I guess I’ll just say I agree with the complaints. All of them.

It's bad, yeah. During my first year of grad school, I thought the situation was ripe for journalists to come in and expose the terrible conditions young scientists were expected to operate in. Then I realized that there's somewhat of an institutional buffer that had long been installed, and there's some validity in the "right of passage" approach. But the pedestal I used to put academia on has since eroded into significant disdain.

It's like someone around here hinted at years ago (COUGHmkCOUGH); If you can just obtain your pedigree and move on, that's almost all that matters. Doors will open. And demonizing industry, like I used to do, is quite silly. Although, I did meet a guy from JP Morgan at a party last week, played hard to get, and then talked mad shit about him and financial companies in general later that evening.

A current teacher at my old high school saw my little bio at a small museum (of sorts), found me on f-book, and invited me to give a presentation to her current science classes. It went really well, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was somewhat perpetuating the problem, in that I was quite selective in the information and perspective I gave during the Q&A session on life as a scientist, and grad school especially. I told them it wasn't easy, you had to be able to stomach the maths, and that you're almost never off the clock when you're payed to think. But I didn't mention the kid in the office next door to mine who hung himself, the multiple breakdowns that I've experienced, how I probably couldn't do it without my girl to anchor me, the statistically poor job prospects, the exponentially growing complexity of the problems we're expected to tackle, ever-increasing competition, etc. etc. etc.