salary

Using Data to Improve the Postdoc Experience (Including Salary and Benefits)

February 11, 2019 by Jewel Lipps

In this episode, Emily interview Dr. Gary McDowell, the executive director of Future of Research. Future of Research is an advocacy organization that uses data to empower early-career researchers. Gary outlines the ongoing work at Future of Research before diving into the details of their recently published study on postdoc salaries. Emily and Gary discuss the complexities around categorizing and counting postdocs as well as the interesting results from the data Future of Research acquired by Freedom of Information Act requests. Current postdocs can contribute to this ongoing project by submitting their salary and benefits data to the Postdoc Salaries database.

Links mentioned in episode

Teaser

Gary (00:00): We actually found that the median salary for all postdocs across the US, regardless of field, was actually pegged to the minimum National Institutes of Health National Research Service award stipend.

Introduction

Emily (00:18): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, a higher Education in personal finance. I’m your host, Emily Roberts. This is season two, episode three, and today my guest is Dr. Gary McDowell, the Executive Director of Future of Research, an advocacy organization that uses data to empower early career researchers. Gary shares results from future research’s, recently published study on postdoc salary data gathered through FOIA requests. We also discuss how prospective postdocs can properly evaluate and negotiate their postdoc job offers. Current postdocs can contribute to this ongoing project by entering their salary and benefits data to the database at postdocsalaries.com. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Gary McDowell. Today on the podcast I have Gary McDowell from Future of Research, and we are going to be discussing postdoc salaries. Uh, they have just wrapped up or well wrapped up a milestone in an ongoing project, and we’ll be discussing that. So, Gary, please, you know, tell us a bit more about yourself and about future of research.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Gary (01:25): Sure. Um, so I, uh, I’m from Northern Ireland Originally, I grew up in Northern Ireland, in Scotland. I did all of my, um, undergraduate and postgraduate study in the UK, um, and then moved over to the US to become a postdoc, um, first at Boston Children’s and then at Tufts University, uh, both in the Boston area. Um, and it was while I was there that I started getting more in interest in the, um, the scientific system itself, um, and how we are training people, how we are, um, you know, setting scientists up for success and producing scientists and not just science. So, um, obviously at that time I was also experiencing a lot of the frustrations that people find with the, the hyper competition that there is in this system. Um, and so, um, moved on afterwards. Uh, I’m now the executive director of this nonprofit future of research, uh, and we’re trying to, uh, champion, engage and empower early career researchers with evidence to help them change the, uh, research system and the enterprise that they’re experiencing, uh, and make improvements.

Emily (02:36): Yeah, I love this. It obviously dovetails really well with what I do. Uh, you guys have a broader focus. Mm. Um, I’m more narrow about just really getting people dialed in and helping them with their finances. Um, kind of throughout, you know, uh, pre-graduate school, during graduate school, post-graduate school. Um, so I love that we have sort of complimentary pursuits here. And we’ll of course be talking about that specifically with, with respect to salary in a moment. But can you, um, give me kind of a little bit more of an overview about, you know, what’s your team at future of research? What have you guys been up to, generally all the different areas that you work in?

Future of Research Nonprofit

Gary (03:09): Sure. So, yeah, we’re, uh, an organization, um, at the moment there’s just me as staff, and we have a board of about 20 early career researchers. Um, so we ended up forming this nonprofit. Originally we’d had a, a conference to bring early career researchers together and discuss some of the issues with, uh, the system and with hyper competition, um, that there is particularly in biomedicine. Uh, and from that conference and then a bunch of conferences around the country, we quickly realized there was this, this need for this, um, this group to be, you know, trying to have these conversations. Um, and in particular, you know, trying to give data and evidence to early career researchers to help ’em make better choices, but also to educate in some sense the rest of the scientific community about the realities that our generation is currently experiencing. So, you know, we have this board, um, um, and volunteers who are actively working on a bunch of projects and issues that, that come up and that we’re experiencing. Um, we have two major projects, which I think are, are, have both come out of local meetings that we held in the last couple of years which are really very, um, you know, we, we wanna try and have specific projects that we’re setting up and establishing, um, having looked at a, a need, uh, around in the community. So those projects, one of them we’re calling who’s on board, and that’s trying to get, uh, more early career folks into leadership positions. So we’re gonna start trying with scientific societies and trying to get more people onto the voting council positions at the top of the, the organization. Um, you know, and trying to bring in that perspective. Um, also recognizing that a lot of people need leadership training and development and, and so on. And hopefully generating a network of future leaders, um, that, that, uh, organizations across research can tap into. Then the other major project that we’re really pushing at the moment is, uh, focusing around mentoring. Um, I think mentoring is one of the biggest concerns of, um, grads, postdocs, uh, et cetera, you name it, throughout the system right now, junior faculty in particular, one of the first things that, that I am asked by junior faculty is, you know, how do I find out more about mentoring people and managing people because I don’t know how to do it and suddenly I’m expected to. Um, and, you know, this can lead to all sorts of issues with people reaching their full potential. Um, you know, egregious behavior can, can occur and is not really held accountable. So we’re, we’re pushing a big summit next June in Chicago to bring people working in this space, this, um, and doing research on mentoring together and trying to figure out what we can do to take grassroots action to really make sure institutions are putting mentoring right at the center of what they’re interested in. Um,

Emily (05:57): Yeah, sounds amazing. Um, especially, particularly the latter project, I think. Um, yeah, please keep going. Or any other major efforts there.

Gary (06:07): Yeah, so we, then we have, so those are things that we’ve sort of set up, um, deliberately, and then there’s things that we’ve sort of responded to and we try to be responsive to, you know, needs that arise. So one of those projects is sort of related to the who’s on board thing. Um, and it’s to do with peer review. Uh, and in particular, we’re trying to address this phenomenon of grad students and postdocs, essentially ghost writing a peer review report that is then submitted under somebody else’s name to a journal. Um, and you know, this, this is not only a problem, it’s sort of scholarly recognition. Um, but it, you know, at the same time we’re hearing that there’s not enough reviewers, um, and journals are sort of crying out for more reviewers and this lack of transparency about who’s actually doing the review and getting the names of particularly, you know, grads and postdocs who journals may want to review again in the future. Um, those sort of barriers of not putting those names across, um, and of not recognizing that scholarly work, uh, and, and who, who did it, um, is a thing that we’re pushing, uh, both with journals, but also, uh, we did a survey asking people about their experiences with this. And one of the big things coming up is that, of course, principal investigators have not been trained in peer review either generally. And so a lot of these practices are to do with just a lot of, uh, assumptions and, um, um, you know, a lack of clarity that there should be a different practice that you should be giving these names. So it’s really, that’s been really interesting to work on and sort of was in response to a survey done by, um, junior folks at eLife in the last year. So, so we’ve been following that. And then the other one, which, which we can talk more about now, is the, the salary project. Um, that really started just as we had formed the nonprofit. It was when there was a change to federal labor law being proposed, um, and the long, and the short of it was that this was going to affect postdocs and it was going to raise their salaries, um, or institutions were going to have to essentially have postdocs clocking in and out and, uh, tracking their time, which is not really very realistic. So, so there was this push to raise salaries, and we, we were following what institutions were doing, uh, to accommodate that change. And that then led us to asking, well, what are the actual salaries that people have and led into the, the, the work that we’ve, we’ve done here.

Emily (08:29): Yeah, I would love to talk about that a little bit more in depth now. Um, when I was, you guys just came out with a, a paper recently, right? What’s the title of that and where can people find it?

Gary (08:39): Sure. So the title is Assessing the Landscape of US Postdoctoral Salaries. Um, it’s open access, it’s in the studies in graduate and postdoctoral education, um, and, uh, which is part of the Emerald Insight Publishing Group. Uh, yeah,

What is a Postdoc?

Emily (08:56): Yeah. So my <laugh>, my question is, I was very interested in this, uh, section of the paper where you talked about the different titles that postdocs might have and how that affects what salaries they have. And it just led me to the question of what is a postdoc?

Gary (09:09): Yeah.

Emily (09:10): Actually, like, can we start there? What’s a postdoc?

Gary (09:12): Yeah. So yes, a postdoc is, so I can give you, I can start with what I think a postdoc should be, and we can maybe work from there. My, you know, when you’re, you’re going through the academic track, um, there’s, you know, you go through your undergraduate phase, then you go to graduate school, you get your PhD, uh, that’s the point at which in my opinion, you should be learning how to do science, how to carry out research, how to, you know, do experiments, uh, how to analyze them, how to learn the nuts and bolts of being a scientist. Um, then what has become the default over time is that in order to become a professor after getting your PhD, there’s an intermediate step known as the postdoc or carrying out post-doctoral research, um, post obviously being, after getting your doctorate. And, um, in my opinion, this is a period in which you should be thinking about your own research goals and how to take those forward and learning under the mentorship, uh, slash apprenticeship of an investigator who already, you know, is doing this, learning how to manage a group, learning how to mentor people, learning how to manage budgets, how to write grants, how to, you know, ensure that your research project can succeed and that you can lead a team. Um, but the postdoc more likely is in reality is, um, a period of further research. Um, usually someone will move on to do a, another project. It’s quite common to change field and get experience by doing a postdoc there. Um, but in reality, what people are doing is trying to get, uh, a number of papers trying to demonstrate that they can succeed in perhaps a different lab to where they did their PhD, um, and, um, sort of accrue credentials in order to get a faculty position to then start as a, as a professor.

Emily (11:09): And I, what I was curious about, because your understanding and my understanding are very, um, similar to one another, I was also coming outta sort of the biomedical world, so that kind of makes sense. But, um, I think in your paper you had something like 11 different common titles under which postdocs can be hired. And so I was just wondering if there’s part of the issue, uh, a discrepancy between how the, the employers or universities or workplaces or mentors see postdocs and how postdocs see themselves.

Gary (11:37): Yeah.

How Was the Idea for a Project to Assess Postdoc Salaries Formed?

Emily (11:38): Um, and we can get into this a little bit more, but one of, I think the main motivations behind your project was, um, just kind of trying to figure out what level of awareness universities, et cetera, have about their own, their own postdocs, whether they’re employees or not. So let, let’s take it back there a little bit bit. So like, you’re, you’re coming up with this idea. Okay. How, how was this idea formed for the project? What exactly were you asking?

Gary (12:00): Yeah, so you’re, you’re totally right, because we were coming from this perspective, I think this is particularly why we took the route that we did. Um, when we were looking at the policies that were being updated in response to this labor law, we started to ask ourselves the question, well, these are policies at an institution that doesn’t tell us necessarily what people are actually getting paid. And it requires adherence to a policy, uh, and that someone essentially is checking up that the policy is being followed. Now, we already, we have a, a preprint, um, paper, um, that we’ve done with, uh, rescuing biomedical research, another nonprofit in this space, um, looking at the National Science Foundation’s data on the number of postdocs. And, um, this was in reaction to a paper that claimed that the number of postdocs was in decline, because that apparently seemed to be reflected in the NSF data. Um, and we dug into that data a little, and we first questioned whether there was actually a decline or whether there was actually a bubble of people postdocing for longer after the recession in 2008. But one of the things we found was that institutions were doing a pretty terrible job of reporting year to year how many postdocs they had. And so, while we were very receptive to, you know, institutions telling us, oh, well, we’re raising our salaries, like this is going to be our new policy. Um, if you don’t know who your postdocs are to begin with, we were curious as to whether people would be falling through the cracks and whether you would actually know who your postdocs are, and, um, whether they’re getting the salaries that they’re supposed to be getting, uh, whether, whether the policies were actually reflected in reality, or whether an institution could say, you know, we recommend all our postdocs get this salary, and then there’s no follow up or, or action on that. So that was a big part of that. Right. And, and knowing as you say that there is this great breadth of, um, assumptions about what the postdoc is, um, you know, there is this constant argument of whether they are employees or whether they are trainees. Um, you know, sadly it seems that they’re employees whenever it suits in keeping them out of training or outta things that you need to do for students. But they’re also trainees when it suits in terms of giving them lower salaries and not giving them benefits.

What Position Counts as an Employee or Not an Employee?

Emily (14:16): I was just going to ask about that. Actually. This is one of, this is just a question that I’m constantly asking about whether people are employees w receiving W twos. Or not employees. And I would think that categorizing people as not employees would be an easy way to get around the, uh, you know, the pol- the, it’s a fair labor of Standards act, right? The FLSA, right?

Gary (14:38): Yeah. So yeah, the, the interesting thing about that, and a lot of institutions did in the beginning try to claim that they’re, because also it’s complicated by where the money comes from for the postdoc. So most postdocs are paid directly off a research project grant, um, as quote unquote staff on the grant. But a lot of postdocs are also on fellowships of various kinds from a whole multitude of different organizations and people on fellowships, uh, especially if they are per paid directly and not paid through the institution, they’re most usually referred to as trainees. Um, they often get the, the worst situation of losing their benefits often when they get on a fellowship, um, after moving off a, uh, another mechanism, um, because the institution says you’re no longer an employee, therefore you no longer have to provide benefits. And this came up a lot with the, the, the Labor Act, um, updates. And what was really interesting was the Department of Labor, um, the specification of like, who is a, who is an employee or not, doesn’t come down to who pays you. It’s the nature of the work that you’re doing. And one of the most interesting things that came up was this, this pushback that occurred of you can’t just claim that your fellows are not, that they are exempt from this law. They actually are not. And indeed, the Department of Labor told that to the National Institutes of Health, that’s why they raised their fellowship stipends, um, because they were told these people are not exempt. They are explicitly, they ended up explicitly being, uh, part of the target of those trying to make the change. Um, so yeah. So the, even within those definitions, part of them are just institutional. The institution will just argue that they have that definition, but it actually sometimes doesn’t even stand up under, under law. So it’s, it’s been an interesting part of this.

Emily (16:24): Yeah, that is very interesting. And it is so important, um, I think for people who are looking to take a new position, whether it’s as a graduate student or as a postdoc or, or what have you, um, to know going into it, how you are viewed by the institution. Employee, not employee trainee, not a, not trainee, um, just because yeah, your, your benefits or whatever might, um, change depending on the, the status that you have. Um, they could be taken away from you if something changes at the university level. Um, so just kind of go into whatever situation you have with eyes wide open.

What Did You Do for the Postdoc Salaries Project?

Emily (16:57): Yeah. So let’s get back to the, to the salary project. Um, so you were curious about, you know, whether policies were actually being applied at, at the institution. So, so what did the actually project end up being? What did you do for it?

Gary (17:10): Sure. So, so we wanted to get these salaries, and this is data that is not, you know, easy to find, uh, that is out there. And so we ended up with this rather blunt, somewhat aggressive, but also, um, easy and also standard methodology, which was to carry out freedom of information requests at public institutions. So what we would do is contact the freedom of information, uh, office or the public records office at the, at a public institution. They’re legally required to give out data like this. And we would ask for, um, in this case, we asked for the simply the title and the salary of everyone who was a postdoc. Um, we wanted to keep it as, as easy as possible. And that was on, we were asking for salaries on the date of December 1st, 2016, which was when this labor law was due to come into effect, uh, when, when changes were, were likely to happen, the institutions had been preparing for at the time. Um, and so, yeah. And so we asked, basically asked for, for this data. Now the, the reason it’s a bit aggressive is that it ends up, um, basically forcing the institution to give data in a, you know, we weren’t asking institutions, we weren’t going to the sort of postdoc offices or to various administrators and asking them to give us the data. Um, but that actually worked out as a really interesting part of this project as an internal metric of whether a university’s administration knows what postdocs are. So I would find some institutions were able to provide the data with no problem, and other institutions, I would be contacted back and asked, you know, what is a postdoc? Can you explain what this is? You know, I would have to look up titles sometimes at the institution to find out what the relevant titles were that we wanted. Um, and, um, you know, we were sort of cross-checking the number of salaries we’re getting with the number that NSF thought, um, that they had. Which, again, those numbers should be reported by people who know better what postdocs are to the NSF. And so we’re, you know, providing all these like controls and looking at seeing how good is the data that we’re getting, um, you know, on top of just getting the numbers, what standard is it at? What are we getting back? And that was actually a really interesting aspect of, of what we were receiving as well.

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Analysis and Findings from the From the Postdoc Salaries Project

Emily (20:03): So once you were able to get, you know, some data, uh, coming back from these public institutions, uh, what what did you do with that? What was, what was your analysis like?

Gary (20:14): Sure. So we had, uh, a data scientist on our team, um, who went through and tried to analyze, basically, you know, we’re, we’re sort of looking at the, the, the distributions of salaries. Um, and, you know, we wanted to break things out by geographic region, um, by, uh, gender, um, and, um, possibly other demographics. We have a little try at that. And also by the, the title, whether what variables there were that were affecting the salaries, um, and what we, you know, what were we seeing overall as the, again, you know, to a big part of this was just assessing the landscape, just figuring out what postdoc salaries looked like and giving us a sense, uh, giving us a bar to work from, uh, in terms of, of efforts going forward.

Emily (21:03): And so, was there anything, uh, well, what were sort of the broad, I guess, conclusions, was it just like, okay, here’s ranges of salaries and, uh, here’s the breakdown of these different groups. Like what were some of those conclusions? And then also was there anything that came out of that that was actually surprising to you?

Gary (21:18): Yeah, so, um, so yeah, we sort of got broad distributions of where salaries were. And we actually, um, before the, the paper was done when we’d actually done the, uh, initial data gathering, we had it write up, um, uh, in nature about this, um, I think it was titled Postdoc salaries very wildly from institution to institution. Um, and they did a very nice demographic of where all the salaries lay, and most people were in the forties, thousands of dollars, um, you know, between 40 and and 49,999, um, which made sense. Um, we actually find that 22% of all of our data was in a $25 range around the new, uh, NIH minimum stipend, uh, which was very close to what the proposed salary threshold had been under the, the federal labor law change. So we found that that really had a, a very striking effect. Um, and in fact, one of the things that was most interesting and I think, um, is useful for us in, in doing policy work going forward, we’re interested in finding out what is, what are the levers that we need to pull in order to raise postdoc salaries? And we actually found that the median salary for all postdocs across the us, regardless of field, was actually pegged to the minimum, uh, national Institutes of Health, um, national Research Service award stipend. So these are the, the numbers that NIH uses for things like F awards and T awards that postdocs are paid off. Um, these are the only people who have to actually be paid according to this stipend. Um, but a lot of institutions just peg their salary scale to the NIH, and in particular, they may not use the scale year to year. They may not have increases per year, but they certainly will peg the minimum salary, must be the NIH’S level. And so we actually find that the most effective policy lever for raising postdoc salaries in the US would be to get the NIH to raise their, um, the, the NRSA award stipends. And that’s obviously something we’ve been pushing.

Emily (23:28): I’m, I’m so glad you brought that up. Um, I remember, so several years ago, I, I did a fellowship at the, um, the National Academies, and I remember reading their, uh, postdoctoral report. The postdoctoral experience revisited, I think was the recent report on it. And seeing that and seeing that discussion about how important the NIH minimum salary, uh, recommendation was, how so many universities were going off of it, which is really just so surprising because again, it’s one, it’s a recommendation. And except for their own internal stuff like it, you know, that’s required. But for everyone else, it’s just a recommendation. And two, it’s a minimum. And it’s not at all taking into account like different cost of living, you know, areas. Like is it, like, is that minimum supposed to be for Bethesda, or is it supposed to be national? I’m not even sure about that. But, um, yeah, anyway, just the fact that they were going off of this as if it were absolute truth and no, it was only ever a minimum and only ever a recommendation. And I’m so glad that you brought that up. And I believe I read that within the last, we’re recording this in December, 2018. I think within the last week or so, NIH actually has raised, um, their, their recommended minimum salary, right?

Gary (24:35): They have, yeah. They have done, they, they did a big raise. We actually plotted this out in a, in the first figure in the paper of raises over time. And, um, you know, the, most of the raises, um, to the current towards the current level happened during the NIH doubling around the turn of the century. Uh, and then the, the Fair Labor Standards Act was actually another major push. Um, you know, the NIH had been pushed along, uh, a couple of times by various reports. Um, I think the, the, the last one previous to the FLSA was the 2012 Biomedical Working Group report. And so there’s been these little pushes and since the FLSA, they’ve pushed up a lot at that point, and then they have consistently continued to push quite high. Um, I think this year was a 2% increase, so that now the minimum is at $50,000, uh, which has been recommended for, for quite some time now.

Emily (25:30): Yeah. So they finally reached another milestone there of getting into the the fifties range <laugh>.

Gary (25:34): Yeah, exactly. So, um, yeah. And then, you know, this has actually been useful as a real policy example. You know, I and, uh, the president of Future of Research, Jessica Polka, were both on the National Academy study, uh, for the next generation researchers initiatives, which NIH is releasing its recommendations on, uh, in a, in a few weeks. And, um, one of the things we were able to push having this data was, well, we know the NIH number is a very important number. And so the recommendation, I think in the upcoming outta that report was NIH needed to raise its number, but also institutions should take that number and then adjust for cost of living and for years experience. So sort of both, both groups needed to be both sets of stakeholders needed to be, to be, uh, yeah. Working on that.

Emily (26:20): Yeah, absolutely. Um, so any other interesting findings from the paper?

Gary (26:25): Yeah. Um, I think one of the things I was surprised with, uh, most was how many salaries there were in the fifties thousand, uh, of dollars. Um, and it was interesting, you know, we did a little bit of, uh, breaking down by, um, by field as far as we could. Um, we had only requested the title and, um, salary of the postdocs to, you know, to have this basic, uh, uh, request, um, and as reasonable requests that hopefully institutions wouldn’t refuse as possible. But half of those institutions ended up giving us also names and department, uh, information so we could work out field for a large subset. Um, and we find that there was no real field dependence on the salaries. Um, you know, I think a lot of people assume that, oh, the humanities will be all the salaries in the low range and the, you know, the higher ones will be computer science, and certainly towards the higher end, you do see some of that. But, you know, there’s no, the humanities are not lower on average than anyone else, to be honest. You’d be surprised how often biomedical en- engineering is, uh, in the low salary range. Um, and, um, yeah, so I think that was one of our surprises, and a lot of this anecdotally seems to be, um, you know, when I go and talk around the country about salaries, um, and make a, a big push for people to be talking about salaries, uh, I hear a lot of who negotiates. Um, a lot of postdocs are negotiating salaries a lot more than I think people know. And so there’s this whole, I think there’s this disparity in who’s asking and who’s not asking. And you know, frankly, that we’re not even supposed to be talking about money to talk about money in academia, as I’m sure you’re, you’re often facing as well in your work to talk about this is already to, to cast out on whether you deserve to be there, because if you’re looking for money, you shouldn’t be in academia sort of thing. Right. So, so that’s been an interesting thing to push as well.

Emily (28:22): Yeah. And I think that leads well into, um, the project that we first met over. Um, you first approached me about, so to give a little backstory for the listener, um, in 2014, I think my husband and I created a website called, uh, PhDstipends.com and it’s just a really simple database where people can enter what their stipends or salaries or fellowships or whatever, uh, your, your university is calling it, uh, basically how much you’re being paid, um, and then kind of whatever other details you would like to add. Um, and it’s just a very simple database, but it’s got, I think there’s over 4,000 entries in it now, and it’s, it’s getting pretty robust. Um, and so anyway, it’s a great place to go to just kind of compare maybe for prospective graduate students offers that they’re getting, um, to see if they’re reasonable, see what other people at that university are being paid, see what, you know, other people in their field are earning at different universities. So that’s kind of that purpose. And then forever, we had the idea that we should do the same thing for postdocs, but we never did it until you and I entered into conversation. And, um, if I remember correctly, the motivation for wanting something like what we eventually created, which is postdocsalaries.com, um, was to figure out if, again, these, well, sort of what you’re saying, if the policies are actually being played out at the individual level for postdoc. So, um, if even the data that was being reported to you was the same as what was perceived to be, you know, the salary by the postdoc, um, him or herself, and then also, you know, the FOIA requests were only given to public institutions. And so you’re completely missing everybody who’s at a private institution. So that was a big question mark there. Um, so yeah, so anything else from your perspective to add about sort of why we started that aspect of the project?

Gary (30:01): Yeah, I mean, as you say, you know, for example, I have no data from Boston <laugh>, um, in the, the postdoc salary paper here because there’s no public institutions essentially there that we FOIA’d or that you can FOIA. So that’s obviously, you know, that’s an example of missing out a, a huge chunk of the population. Um, and, you know, then you’re asking the question, well, this is all for public institutions. Do we think the private institutions might be paying more or less or, or what have you? So again, getting people to self-report, um, you know, the quality of the data that we got for this paper, um, we had a lot of pre-processing, first of all, because, um, frankly, the data that we got, what we asked for was annualized salaries. What we often got was what had been through payroll, and again, with the example of people on fellowships, uh, if they were being paid directly, um, sometimes we would get these salaries back that were zero or a few thousand dollars. Um, and you know, the, the absolute legal minimum under federal labor law is 23,660. Um, and so we, we give institutions the benefit of the doubt and said, well, let’s cut off all the salaries, be below this certain level. That’s not to say all the ones above it or exactly what is being paid, but there was this element of nuance to the numbers we were getting and whether that would affect overall our data. So with the self-reporting, um, it’s nice to not only get private places, but also to get a sense of whether what people are reporting, um, matches up with what the institution is reporting. We, we knew for one institution, university of Washington, um, they had actually sent us excellent salary data. Um, and, uh, I was contacted over social media by someone on a fellowship there who said, oh, you know, you’ve been talking a little bit about how fellows are gonna be lower. Um, you know, I, I’m betting that my salary in Washington will look lower than it is. And I was like, well, all the Washington salaries look, you know, very, they’re all above NIH and they all seem like pretty good. So I just sent that person what their salary was in my data, and they said, oh, that’s exactly what I’m seeing. So it was even, it was really great to see that positive story of an institution that was, you know, giving us like, the data exactly that we wanted <laugh>. Um, so, and seeing that match up. Um, but yeah, I think it’s, it’s fun to, to have the, the, the effort online for people to self-report because it gives you, you know, we are obviously putting out salaries and we’ve repeated our data collection effort again for 2017 and 2018. And so we’re starting to gather that data now and we can keep putting that data out there. But I think it’s very useful also for, for this sort of self-reporting tool for people to go in and look and see what people are doing. And it also gives the opportunity for people to comment on issues that have come up. ’cause we also have benefits in there. Benefits is just a whole minefield with postdocs, even within the same institution. There can be all sorts of different benefits categories for all sorts of different titles of postdocs. So people self-reporting what they’re getting, and also just having a free form space in which to comment on things they experienced has been really interesting to look at. Um, and that sort of sharing of information, which is really what we’re very passionate about, that people are making informed choices and able to act on those.

Emily (33:17): I think that’s where we have such good overlap between, between you and I in terms of our missions and, and I am like all about more transparency around money in general, but salary, I mean, that’s a really difficult area, but we need more transparency around that too. So I agree. It’s so interesting to look into the database. Um, again, postdocsalaries.com, go there, enter your salaries, enter your benefit information. What I love seeing again is, uh, fellowship versus employee kind of stuff. That’s so interesting. And again, what the titles are. And, uh, we do have a section there for demographics as well, so that you guys, that that data is not, uh, publicly visible, but you guys are able to do that analysis on it to continue the questions of who’s being paid what and why. Um, and then my other favorite kind of section about this is regarding negotiating, which you brought up earlier. Um, the last time I looked, which wasn’t, it was maybe a couple months ago, about 25% of the people who had entered, you know, their information into postdocsalaries.com had negotiated something or is had attempted to. Uh, which was kind of a higher proportion that I was thinking, but it’s very encouraging. And so any, I would say any person who’s looking at taking a postdoc position should at least attempt to negotiate. It might not be successful, but, uh, you know, that’s what you would do for any normal job. And absolutely, this is, you are at a high level of training already. Uh, many of us consider it to be a job, whether it’s that officially or not. And so I think it’s a good encouragement just to see other people’s examples, just to know that other people are negotiating and you know, you can do it too.

Gary (34:46): I think that has been one of the biggest surprises. And then, you know, it’s one of those things that when I knew that a lot of people must have been negotiating because the salaries were there, were salaries higher than what I was expecting. And then starting to talk about that with people. Yeah. 25% now, I actually think sounds about right. Like it’s, it sounds high, but it also is, I think reflects the, the, the data broadly. Um, and my favorite thing in talking about this too, because whenever I give a talk in an institution, I just love to bring up money and talk about money and usually under the, the auspices of, we’re not supposed to talk about this, so I’m not gonna talk about salary and like, what you should do about it. Um, and as you know, speaking to graduate students in particular, um, this should be one of the questions that you ask your prospective pi, and I am, you know, the not only to to get more money, which I think people deserve, but also frankly, how that question is answered will tell you a lot. I think about whether you want to work with that person, because someone who says no can give very different reasons and can be a person that you may, may or may not want to work for. For example, if someone says, I would really love to pay you more, you know, I only have so much of a certain grant, you know, we can look into applying for fellowships and I can give you some more money on top as a reward, which is a thing that also happens quite often. Um, you know, because essentially you’re saving me a salary so I can give you some money out of a, you know, another budget or something for, for that. Uh, as a, as a thank you, uh, versus someone who says, oh, why would I pay you more? Right? Like, why, why should I give you a higher salary? This isn’t about the money. Like, I think if a person tells you that you should really reflect on whether you wanna work for that person, because that could reflect other attitudes that they have about you and your role and your importance and so on. And, and whether you are a warm body in the lab versus someone that they really wanna see succeed and, and encourage. So I think that’s, it’s all part of gathering information and being, you know, making an informed choice, um, and realizing also that you are a bargain, uh, to these people and that, you know, you really should be pushing. If they want someone good, it’s good to try and push a little and see, see whether they’re, they’re willing to budge on some of these things.

Action Steps That Postdocs Can Take Today to Improve Their Salaries, Benefits, or Working Conditions

Emily (37:02): I love it. I love it so much. <laugh>. Um, let’s, let’s zoom back out a tiny bit. So, what can a person who is a postdoc today or expects to be a postdoc in the near future, um, what can they do, what can they get involved in that will help them improve either their salary or their benefits or working conditions or anything like that? What’s some action steps that postdocs can take today?

Gary (37:24): Sure. So, um, always having data to hand is such a useful thing. So both for the individual, but also for groups who are trying to advocate. You know, we hope that the data like this gives a, um, gives a somewhat of a mandate to say, Hey, you know, here are salaries that people are getting, um, that, that are, you know, are in my field or at this institution or what have you, and, you know, or this is what your policy says and this is what you should be doing. Really trying to go in with, with that, particularly on the personal level is good. Um, we found that, um, what was a nice example was that when we were comparing various institutions publicly, we found that there were administrators at institutions who were trying to push for raises who had faced opposition. Um, suddenly we’re able to say, well, we’re being compared with everyone else on this list and we don’t look very good compared to our, our aspirational peers or our, you know, whoever they’re comparing themselves to. And if we wanna be competitive for postdocs, um, that, you know, that then they were having success with that. So for groups who are looking to push for change at an institution, um, you know, there’s a number of lines of evidence. Um, we have, uh, various resources at our, our website on postdoc salaries that we hope are useful for people trying to push for those change at institutions. Again, comparing with the peers is always a useful one. Um, also pointing out the recommendations that there are, I think our most recent recommendation is that the salary should be at least 50,000 then has cost of living adjusted locally, then also has years of experience. Um, and, uh, yeah, that, that these are the recommendations that are out there, that this is what institutions should be doing. Um, you know, we see varying success with this, uh, at various institutions. It depends who’s there to be honest, and, and whether they feel they are concerned about this or not. Um, I would definitely recommend to institutions who are in the Midwest, um, or who are at places where there’s a, um, you know, there’s some institutions you go and they’re like, oh, we really struggle to get quote unquote good postdocs. Um, not quite sure exactly what that means. I think it’s a little bit of, you know, we are not in Boston, so we struggle to get all the people who just apply to Boston. But that’s a good point of, you know, if you’re in institution that shows that you can pay more and live somewhere in the Midwest, which has a lower cost of living, you actually may attract more people at this time when, you know, people are struggling to be able to afford to stay in academia, to be perfectly honest. So, so I think these are all good buttons to, to try to push. Um, and now that we have this data here as a baseline to start working with, working with, um, hopefully that’s, that’s a useful thing to, to use as evidence.

Emily (40:13): Yeah, absolutely. And the, the listeners can participate in this by again, going to postdocsalaries.com and entering their information and telling your colleagues and your friends about it too, and just continue to spread it. I think as of this recording, we have about 1200, um, entries, which is decent, but like, let’s keep it growing. Absolutely. Um, and you guys will keep going on the public institution side of that effort. So I would say particularly if you’re at a private institution, it’s even more important to get out this self-reporting, uh, mechanism because there’s not another good way to get at the data, at least that we know of right now. So, yeah. Gary, thank you so, so much for, for joining me today and I look forward to, you know, continuing to work together on this.

Gary (40:54): Yeah, for sure.

Conclusion

Emily (40:56): Gary, I’m so glad you joined me on the podcast today for this important conversation. Show notes for this episode are at pfforphds.com/S2E3. If you wanna get in touch with me, you can email me at [email protected] or find me on Twitter @pfforPhDs or Facebook Personal Finance for PhDs. If you’d like to receive updates on new podcast episodes and other content, go to pfforphds.com/subscribe. See you in the next episode. The music is Stages of Awakening by Poddington Bear from the free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC Podcast. Editing and show notes creation by Jewel Lipps.

How to Put Your New Postdoc Salary in Context

January 8, 2018 by Emily

After a long, arduous journey through graduate school, you’ve successfully defended your PhD and are about to take the next step in your research career: a postdoc. One of the best perks of transitioning from being a graduate student to a postdoc is the pay increase. While postdocs aren’t exactly rolling in dough, they are usually paid significantly better than graduate students, and after 5+ years of zero to tiny raises, it’s gratifying to finally receive a higher salary.

However, before you buy that new car or put an offer on a house, take some time to put your new postdoc salary offer in context. There are a few subtle changes common to the grad student-postdoc transition that will decrease your take-home pay and/or discretionary income.

(This post is specific to the US.)

Employee or Fellow?

The very first question to clarify is what exactly your employment status will be with respect to your university/institute. Just like in graduate school, there are two broad ways you can be paid: compensatory or non-compensatory. In academic-speak: Are you an employee or a fellow?

If you see “fellow” in your title or offer letter, have heard “fellowship” from your advisor when discussing funding, or have won an outside individual fellowship, you are a fellow and not an employee of your university. As a fellow, you may receive no benefits from your university or only a few; you are almost certainly not going to receive all the benefits a full employee would. You should contact your university’s postdoc office or your departmental administrative assistant for a full explanation of your benefits.

If you aren’t labeled a “fellow” you are most likely an employee, but there may be multiple classes of employees at your university so it’s important to determine which one. (Postdocs may not be offered the same benefits as faculty, for example.) Once you know exactly your class of employee, you can read through material provided by Human Resources to determine your benefits, and direct any questions you have to Human Resources or the postdoc office.

When in doubt, ask if you will receive W-2 pay or not. W-2s are used for employee pay, while non-compensatory pay is not reported to the IRS or reported on a 1099-MISC.

Further viewing: Types of Grad Student Pay and Their Implications

Some of the common, though not universal, differences in benefits offered to employees though not fellows are: income tax withholding, 403(b) access, 403(b) match, subsidized health insurance premiums, health insurance premiums paid as a payroll deduction, Health Savings Account/Flexible Spending Account, group disability and/or life insurance access, and official paid time off.

Income and FICA Taxes

If you’re earning more as a postdoc, you’re also going to pay more in federal income tax (given no other changes in your personal life). Your effective tax rate will increase and possibly your marginal tax rate as well. So if your gross pay increases by $1,000 per month, for example, federal income tax may take a $120 or $220 (or somewhere in between) bite out of that increase.

The same broad story would be true for state taxes if you are not moving states, but many postdocs relocate states as well with their new positions. If you don’t want any surprises in your first paycheck, look up how your new state’s tax brackets and rates compare to your old state’s.

One of the biggest tax changes that occurs when going from a grad student to a postdoc is FICA tax (Social Security and Medicaid). As a graduate student, you did not pay FICA tax. Postdoc fellows will also not pay FICA tax (or self-employment tax) on their income as they do not technically receive “wages.” However, postdoc employees will begin to pay FICA tax. On the employee side, the Social Security tax is 6.2% and the Medicare tax is 1.45% on all of your income up to $128,400 (in 2018). If your new postdoc salary is $45,000 per year, for example, you will pay $3,442.50 in FICA tax. That can be a big shock for someone who wasn’t paying any tax in that category previously.

The best way to calculate your new take-home pay after all of these changes is to use a paycheck calculator, of which there are many.

Further reading: Why Is My Take-Home Pay as a Postdoc Nearly the Same as When I Was a Grad Student?

Health Insurance

While your grad school and postdoc universities almost certainly offer you the option of buying group health insurance, who pays the premium and how might change.

As a graduate student, it is typical to have your health insurance premium paid partially or completely from funds that are not part of your stipend pay, so many graduate students don’t have to factor that cost into their take-home pay.

A postdoc employee will likely pay part or all of his insurance premium through a tax-free payroll deduction. A postdoc fellow’s insurance premium may be paid on her behalf, similar to a graduate student, or come completely from her salary.

This is an important benefit to check into prior to starting your postdoc position as you don’t want any lapse in coverage or to be surprised by the additional expense. The premium for a postdoc’s insurance may be much higher than a graduate student’s, depending on the risk pool each position is put in.

Student Loans

Another big change when you transition out of being a student is that your student loans, if you have any, are no longer eligible for in-school deferment. Beginning to pay off student loans can be a large monthly expense on a postdoc salary, depending on the total amount owed.

Contact your lender(s) to find the minimum payment due and the period over which you will repay your loans. Federal student loans have a standard repayment period of 10 years, but private student loans may take a shorter or longer period of time. Factor this minimum payment due into your planning for how to allocate your salary.

If you want to pay off your debt faster than the standard repayment period, which is an excellent idea for debt at a moderate or high interest rate, plan on paying more than the minimum amount due each month.

If you don’t think your postdoc salary can handle even the minimum payment on your student loans, you have two options to immediately consider.

1) With respect to your federal student loans, you may be eligible for one of the many repayment programs that lower your minimum payment due (even, potentially, to $0) by extending the repayment period and overall amount of money you will repay (income-based repayment, pay as you earn, etc.). Your eligibility for these programs depends on your household income. Carefully consider whether it is in your best interest to use one of these programs, even if you are eligible.

2) There are many lenders currently offering student loan refinancing at competitive interest rates. When you refinance, you are paying off your old loans and taking out new private loans, so make sure you would not be losing any benefits unique to student loans, such as the repayment programs for federal student loans. Be forewarned that these lenders only work with borrowers with excellent credit and low debt-to-income ratios. If you can significantly lower your interest rate, refinancing may be a positive step for your personal finances, both lowering your minimum payment due and reducing the total amount of money you will repay.

Cost of Living

With a change in university naturally comes a change in the local cost of living. As you well know, living expenses vary greatly from city to city. At the lower salary levels of a graduate student or postdoc, this can be a major concern.

There are two quick methods to estimate how the cost of living will change between your grad school city and your postdoc city.

CNN offers a cost of living comparison calculator. Plug in the two cities in question (or as close as you can get to them) and put in either your grad student salary or your postdoc salary. Your greater familiarity with the cost of living in your grad school city combined with this calculator will help you estimate how far your new salary will go in your new city.

MIT’s living wage database also provides insight. Look up the living wage for your grad school university’s county and your postdoc university’s county. The living wage will be closer to your grad student salary than your postdoc salary, but the difference between the two will also help you determine how much of an increase or decrease in cost of living you will experience.

A more involved but also more effective step if you have not yet moved to your new city is to sketch a budget. Using your best estimate of your take-home pay based on the above factors, research how much you are likely to spend on housing, food, transportation, etc. if you kept your perceived lifestyle the same from grad school into your postdoc. Ideally, this exercise will help you decide in which areas of your budget you are able and would like to upgrade your lifestyle, such as living without a roommate.

Personal Experience with the Transition to a Postdoc Position

My husband stayed in his PhD advisor’s lab for an extra year as a postdoc to finish up a few papers before applying for a “real” multi-year postdoc at another institution. My husband received one postdoc offer that he seriously considered before ultimately choosing a position in industry. We performed the calculations above regarding increased taxes and insurance costs to compare the take-home pay of his new postdoc offer directly to the take-home pay from his short-term postdoc and graduate student positions. The take-home pay from the postdoc offer was slightly less than that of his short-term postdoc position and much higher than his pay as a graduate student.

However, when we compared the cost of living in our grad school city, Durham, NC, to the cost of living in Boston, MA, where the new offer was from, we were shocked by the results. In terms of the effective purchasing power from my husband’s take-home pay, the pay for the postdoc position in Boston was “less” than even his grad student pay in Durham. We would not have expected to experience an effective pay decrease moving from a grad student position to a postdoc position, but that is how the numbers worked out. I’m very glad that we took the time to do those estimates before he made a final decision about the offer.

Further reading: An Agonizing Decision

While the gross pay from your new postdoc position may seem great in comparison with your grad student pay, don’t be fooled! You must account for several important changes in taxes, benefits, and cost of living to compare apples to apples.