Benjamin Golub, a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows who will become an assistant professor of economics at Harvard in 2015, said that the effects of the recession have altered the type of careers that Ph.D. candidates decide to pursue.

“Mostly [recessions] change the outside options, they change where people would go,” he said. “If consulting firms and finance firms are hiring less, as they do in a recession, then it really makes it more competitive at every level.”

“Some [political science] graduates go off to fulfill roles like data scientists for places like Facebook and Google,” Spirling said. “So those with quantitative skills that they built up during their Ph.D. process have generally found it relatively straightforward to find non-academic employment.”

Brown said that skills like statistical analysis, theoretical development, and modeling, give social science PhDs. an advantage in finding employment in the private sector, particularly in government and business analysis.

—Staff writer Francesca Annicchiarico can be reached at francesca.annicchiarico@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @FRAnnicchiarico.

—Staff writer John P. Finnegan can be reached at finnegan@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @finneganspake.