PostDoctoral Salaries

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Surveying Post Doc Salaries: Summary

In 2016, our Executive Director, Dr. Gary McDowell, submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to 51 public US institutions to collect data on the postdoctoral salary research landscape. He received salary and job title information of almost 14,000 postdocs at 52 US institutions (1 private institution through a collaborator and colleague), along with names of 7,000 postdocs and departmental affiliations of 4,000 postdocs.

Papers and data

Disparities in salaries

An exploratory analysis of the data showed evidence of large disparities in postdoc salaries and a postdoc gender pay gap, as well as the influence of job title on postdoc salary.

Rags to Riches

Gary’s work was featured in Nature. Future of Research also collaborated with the group postdocsalaries.com to promote transparency around the topic of postdoc salaries. For more information on how the passing, Implementation and ultimate repeal of the Fair Labor Standards Act affected this study, and the work that Future of Research did to engage and empower postdocs around these changes, view our “FLSA ” section on the  Making ECR Voices Heard page