Faculty hiring and retention determine the composition of the US academic workforce and directly shape educational outcomes¹ , careers² , the development and spread of ideas³ and research priorities^4,5 . However, hiring and retention are dynamic, refecting societal and academic priorities, generational turnover and eforts to diversify the professoriate along gender^6–8 , racial⁹ and socioeconomic¹⁰ lines. A comprehensive study of the structure and dynamics of the US professoriate would elucidate the efects of these eforts and the processes that shape scholarship more broadly. Here we analyse the academic employment and doctoral education of tenure-track faculty at all PhD-granting US universities over the decade 2011–2020, quantifying stark inequalities in faculty production, prestige, retention and gender. Our analyses show universal inequalities in which a small minority of universities supply a large majority of faculty across felds, exacerbated by patterns of attrition and refecting steep hierarchies of prestige. We identify markedly higher attrition rates among faculty trained outside the United States or employed by their doctoral university. Our results indicate that gains in women’s representation over this decade result from demographic turnover and earlier changes made to hiring, and are unlikely to lead to long-term gender parity in most felds. These analyses quantify the dynamics of US faculty hiring and retention, and will support eforts to improve the organization, composition and scholarship of the US academic workforce.