Colleges employed 3.9 million people in 2022, up 1.75 percent from 2020 but still down from more than four million in 2019. Community college employee rolls have continued to shrink. And the gains have come despite the fact that community college workforces have continued to shrink, dropping by more than 4 percent over all since 2020 and by nearly 6 percent among instructors. Data from the Education Department’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, published last week, show that institutions eligible to distribute federal financial aid funds employed 3,935,708 administrators, faculty and staff members in fall 2022, up 1.7 percent from 3,868,066 in fall 2020, during the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic.
