Counts and Demographics of IO Psychology Doctoral Degrees

Have you ever wondered about the demographics of IO Psychology PhDs? The National Science Foundation recently released its report from the 2021 Survey of Earned Doctorates, which summarizes trends in doctoral education across US universities. There are a few interesting tidbits about the IO psychology degrees awarded back in 2021:

• IO psychology PhD programs awarded 181 research doctorates in 2021, which accounts for 4.9% of all doctoral degrees in psychology and 0.3% of all doctoral degrees awarded.
• 64.6% of IO psychology research doctorates were awarded to women (versus 73.0% for psychology in general).
• 11.0% of IO psychology research doctorates were awarded to international students (versus 8.3% for psychology in general).
• The racial breakdown of American IO PhD psychology graduates, compared to psychology in general, was:
  • 11.4% Hispanic or Latino (vs. 11.7% for psych in general)
  • 0.0% American Indian or Alaskan Native (vs. 0.3%)
  • 9.4% Asian (vs. 6.4%)
  • 8.7% Black or African American, not Hispanic (vs. 7.9%)
  • 65.1% White, not Hispanic (vs. 66.2%)
  • 4.0% More than one race (vs. 4.1%)

So overall, it looks like the profile of awarded IO psychology doctoral degrees looks very similar to the that of the field in general. The exception appears to be gender balance, for which IO is closer to gender parity than almost all other subfields of psychology (although still 15% away from equal odds).

You can find the source for all of these values, and a huge amount of additional data not specific to IO psychology, by looking at the tables generated from survey data. Most of these numbers came from Tables 3-1 through 3-3.

I’d be very curious to see how these numbers change following people into career paths but could not find any relevant data. If you know of any, please let me know!