Edit: to be clear, this is based on the pre-covid experience. I gather that this year things indeed look pretty bleak.
Look at the CVs of some of your full professors and older faculty. You won’t see nearly as many “postdoc” years on there.
Postdocs are not a tenured position. They are just another step in the temp job/contract work level of the food chain.
To put it differently, no one retires from a postdoc.
In my days in academic research, postdocs were humorously described as paid positions to send out CVs and file job applications. The faculty also gave postdocs their own office so that they wouldn't bother undergrads with their crying.
Senior faculty appeared to be a little out of touch when I finished the contract early in favour of a job in industry which utilised my skill set. No one else was surprised.
And then another postdoc.
And then another postdoc.
And then another postdoc.
This is not an example of doing OK.
To give you context, in the 80's, the math department at my (average) undergrad routinely hired faculty members straight out of their PhD. Postdocs were only for people aiming for a faculty position at a top school.
I just checked all the new faculty members there since 2010. Most had 2 postdocs before they got in. A few had only one postdoc. And this much trouble for a no name school.
Yeah, I 'member when postdocs were not a thing for math. I 'member internships for math majors weren't really a thing, either. I think internships were barely a thing, but, I'm not sure.
This was addressed in my comment:
> Postdocs were only for people aiming for a faculty position at a top school.
Don't look at people who are outliers. Pick a random university in Oklahoma, Kansas, etc. Find someone who joined in the 80's or earlier. Check their CV. Did they do a postdoc?
How well do they get paid? What kinds of benefits do they get? In the US, the annual salary is $40-50K/year - roughly half that of a tenure track faculty member. I just checked one university and picked a random post doc and a random assistant professor. Postdoc is getting $51K/year, assistant professor is getting $110K/year.
It's fine if you do one stint, but a lot of people need to do multiple of them. It's not all that unusual seeing someone approaching 40 before they get a tenure track position.
...are fixed term soft money positions.
Check back in 2 years.
Oh don't be confused. I assure you each and every single one of the understands the difference very well.
What it seems you're not understanding is that to them it's not a matter of having picked the soft money track over the tenure track. No, that choice was never on the table. Their choice was between the soft money track and no track at all. Thus the ones who are fortunate enough to be in a position to choose will pick the soft money track in hopes that it puts them in a better position to transition to a tenure one.