There is very little information available on how much postdocs are actually paid in the U.S., beyond data on institutional salary policies gathered by the National Postdoctoral Association. Following on from recent discussions about postdoc salaries changing as a result of proposed updates to U.S. Federal labor law, we have gathered data from a selection of institutions through Freedom of Information Requests, asking only for titles and salaries of postdocs, to see if we can identify actual postdoctoral salaries. The aggregate data, and more information, can be found at out “Investigating Postdoc Salaries” Resource. Every day, we will be releasing a discussion of each individual institution or system from which we received data. Today: University of Massachusetts Medical School.

 

Cost for FOIA Request: $0

Additional notes: Names also received.

 

One year ago today, UMass Med School announced that it would be cancelling its plans to raise postdoc salaries (November 23, 2016 was the day before the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S.). The current policy, updated in July 2017, sets the minimum postdoc salary at $41,870:

 

As of December 1st, the Biochemistry department rebelled and unanimously voted to raise salaries anyway for their postdocs.

 

On January 10th, the institution decided to devolve responsibility for raising salaries to individual PIs, and so the institution does not take responsibility for having a central policy, other than setting the minimum in their research funding policy as mentioned above.

 

242 postdocs (67% of all postdocs) were on salaries below $47,476 as of December 1st 2016. 76 postdocs were on $41,205, which was presumably the 2016 minimum (the 2017 level being $41,870).