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 Maryland.

 

Cost for FOIA Request: $24.25 (for UMD Baltimore)

Additional notes: Full salary listing received in paper for UMD Baltimore.

 

For UMD Baltimore only, all salaries were sent as a paper copy and so had to be manually read through to pick out postdocs, and so only one Postdoctoral Fellow title was selected for inclusion. Full salaries seemed to be included, and one postdoc was on $23,660. That this person was a postdoc was verified by searching for the postdoc by name online; although they are listed as a postdoc and are on the payroll, they also appear to have their own lab in another country, as well as 12 years of postdoctoral experience. All other salaries were $30,000 or above.

 

UMD College Park had the highest average salary in our dataset.