Schools will suffer consequences unless we see an uptick in the actual number of jobs. The economy is pretty much full-steam ahead now. We’re close to full employment according to some economists.

— Kyle McEntee, executive director of Law School Transparency, adding a dose of reality to the all-too-optimistic employment statistics that were recently released by the ABA for the Class of 2018, which revealed the “highest legal employment rate in a decade,” with 78.6 percent of graduates having secured full-time, long-term jobs that either require bar passage, or for which a law degree offers an advantage. (The Class of 2018 was ~2 percent smaller than the Class of 2017, and was the smallest class in recent law school enrollment history.)

According to Law School Transparency, the number of full-time legal jobs for law school graduates was more or less flat (up by only a few dozen), which is consistent with the past several years. Future graduating classes, whose sizes have gotten incrementally larger since 2015, may be in for a rude awakening when it comes to their job searches.

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.