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Resources for PhD Job Seekers from the Hosts of Propelling Careers

January 12, 2026 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Jim Gould and Lauren Celano, the co-hosts of Propelling Careers, about strategies for PhD job seekers, starting with an update on the PhD job market. They discuss how PhDs can figure out the salaries of various careers and particular jobs, including where they might fall within a posted salary range, and what benefits are offered at a company. They review where job seekers can go for both free and paid assistance. Finally, both Jim and Lauren give excellent financial advice related to job transitions.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Resources for PhD Job Seekers from the Hosts of Propelling Careers

Teaser

Jim (00:00): But it’s not productive to panic and say, oh my gosh, let me send out a whole bunch of of resumes or applications without actually going through the process. The process might end up being expedited time-wise, you know, instead of three to six months or nine months of exploration, job application, and interviewing, you might have a couple weeks, but you still have to go through the steps of doing that, and you have to fight off that panic.

Introduction

Emily (00:33): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (01:01): This is Season 23, Episode 1, and today my guests are Dr. Jim Gould and Lauren Celano, the co-hosts of Propelling Careers. Our topic is strategies for PhD job seekers, starting with an update on the PhD job market. We discuss how PhDs can figure out the salaries of various careers and particular jobs, including where they might fall within a posted salary range, and what benefits are offered at a company. We review where job seekers can go for both free and paid assistance. Finally, both Jim and Lauren give excellent financial advice related to job transitions.

Emily (01:42): These action items are for you if you switched onto non-W-2 fellowship income as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac last fall and are not having income tax withheld from your stipend or salary. Action item #1: Fill out the Estimated Tax Worksheet on page 8 of IRS Form 1040-ES. This worksheet will estimate how much income tax you will owe for 2025 and tell you whether you are required to make manual tax payments on a quarterly basis. The next quarterly estimated tax due date is this Thursday, January 15, 2026. Action item #2: Whether you are required to make estimated tax payments or pay a lump sum at tax time, open a separate, named savings account for your future tax payments. Calculate the fraction of each paycheck that will ultimately go toward tax and set up an automated recurring transfer from your checking account to your tax savings account to prepare for that bill. This is what I call a system of self-withholding, and I suggest putting it in place starting with your next fellowship paycheck so that you don’t get into a financial bind when the payment deadline arrives. If you need some help with the Estimated Tax Worksheet or want to ask me a question, please consider joining my workshop, Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients. It explains every line of the worksheet and answers the common questions that PhD trainees have about estimated tax. The workshop includes 1.75 hours of video content, a spreadsheet, and invitations to at least one live Q&A call each quarter this tax year. This quarter’s Q&A call is on Wednesday, January 14, 2026 at noon Pacific Time. If you want to purchase this workshop as an individual, go to PF for PhDs dot com slash Q E tax. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s23e1/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Jim Gould and Lauren Celano, the co-hosts of Propelling Careers.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (04:05): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, the host of the Propelling Careers podcast, Jim Gould and Lauren Celano, and they are gonna take the time to introduce themselves to you, but I just wanna say, if you’re a PhD, you need to go right now and subscribe to their podcast because it’s really, really valuable whether you’re in a job searching, you know, time or not. Although that is a subject of the podcast still something we need to keep up all the time. So go subscribe. Also, Jim, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself first.

Jim (04:32): Thanks, Emily for the invitation and thanks for the plug to our, uh, podcast as well. So, I’m director for postdoc affairs and program director for Responsible Conduct of research at Harvard Medical School, where I’ve been for almost 15 years now, providing programming and coaching and policy implementation for our postdocs here. I’ve received my bachelor’s in molecular biology from Clarion, University of Pennsylvania, my PhD in biochemistry at University of Louisville in Kentucky, and did my postdoc training in two different laboratories at the National Cancer Institute at the NCI in Frederick, Maryland.

Emily (05:05): Excellent. Lauren, how about you?

Lauren (05:08): Alright, well, currently, uh, the co-founder of a company called Propel Careers, and I do a lot to be able to help support PhDs and postdocs and early career people in their career journey. Um, but I’ve been in the life sciences sector now about 24 years, the first 10 of which was more drug discovery focused. And since about 2009 I’ve been working really closely with a whole range of postdocs and PhDs and early career people to help them navigate their careers.

Emily (05:34): My next question may have started to be answered by your, uh, background information there, but I’m, I’m curious how you developed this expertise, particularly in PhD careers. Um, Jim, why don’t we start with you because we know how you got your PhD, but then how did you get into this work?

Jim (05:48): Alright, so, you know, I I I was experiencing academia and research training firsthand as, uh, you know, in my bachelor’s. You know, I did a, uh, research stint, uh, summer undergraduate research fellowship actually at Ohio University and went into a PhD program trying to figure out what to do career wise with my molecular biology background. Uh, it seemed like it made sense going to graduate school, getting a PhD, struggled a little bit as a student, trying to figure out what it actually meant to, to do research and, and be successful there. And then, as I was a graduate student, realized that there’s an entire community and my peers and colleagues and fellow students who also needed help. And there wasn’t a ton of infrastructure for the development of professional skills, tons of research happening and, you know, we were able to, you know, show presentation skills, but it wasn’t a professional skill set.

Jim (06:42): And it was one of those things where we started ourselves building those skills and, and pulling groups together. And then the next step is like, okay, I don’t have enough experience to go on the job market directly from a PhD. So I did postdoc and not fully understanding what postdoc means ’cause there weren’t a ton of postdocs when I was a graduate student at U of L. There are more now. And just having been in that process in the training and struggling in each one of those stages and then figuring out things for myself, but also figuring out things to help my, my peers and colleagues. So that gave me a lot of just sort of on the ground practical experience and helping others. And then I realized I could probably do this for a career, but didn’t know what it looked like, didn’t know what it was, what it would be called.

Jim (07:28): I was looking at education and outreach, but it was running a, um, a postdoc association running seminar series, just being invited to sit on committees and panels and get questions asked of me like, well, what’s the postdoc experience? Where we’re faculty, we’re appointed, we, we don’t know exactly how postdocs are, are, are being treated or what they need or what the trainees need. And I was like, well, we need this, we need this. And it just sort of snowballed building a reputation, doing that, and then realizing I can make a career out of it. And at the same time, as I was in the middle of my, my postdoc, finishing my postdoc, there was a proliferation of postdoc offices growing, you know, and there are still institutions that are still starting postdoc offices. So I went from being a postdoc doing research, but also helping my, my fellow postdocs to running a postdoc.

Jim (08:20): And then I needed to learn the administrative aspect of policy development, of implementation, of learning how to coach. But doing this sort of day to day, week to week, growing and building my own portfolio of presentations, of skills, of coaching, I, I’ve been able to just build that expertise and now working with maybe even thousands of postdocs and PhDs and other trainees. So being able to then share that experience through my workshops, through my trainings and, and whatever else other people invite me to talk about. But also through that podcast that we have Propelling Careers.

Emily (08:56): And how many years has it been since you devoted yourself full-time to this

Jim (08:59): Full-time? It’s been 15 years. So I started this job in 2011, June, 2011. So June, 2026 will be 15 years on the dot.

Emily (09:08): Amazing. And I can see so many parallels actually between your story of, you know, needing this information for yourself and struggling through it, and then starting to teach other people with my own story. Of course, you decided to do this from within academia, <laugh>, and I’ve decided to do it from external academia, but still a lot of parallels in the motivation there. Um, Lauren, how did you come to, you know, decide to focus on this particular population?

Lauren (09:31): So, I, I have a scientific undergrad. I have biochemistry, molecular biology is what I focused on in college, and a lot of my friends decided to go to graduate school, so I started to get to know people that were doing their PhDs and some of them decided to also do postdocs. I also had moved to Boston in 2003 and, uh, started to be surrounded by people <laugh> with advanced academic training from the biotech activities I was involved in, but also just from my friend network and that sort of thing. And I started to notice that a lot of people had these amazing skills, but didn’t always know what to do. And in my working world, before Propel, I was, uh, getting to know a lot of different people in biotech companies and across a whole range of different roles and that sort of thing. And when I ended up, uh, going back for my MBA, I started to see that there was this need to be able to help people think about their future, to think about what are they doing and how are they leveraging their skills.

Lauren (10:25): I was giving advice to a lot of friends of mine, and then I realized that maybe this is something that could be applicable to other types of people. So I kind of fell into it, to be honest. But it’s been really fun to be able to help all these motivated people that really just wanna do great work and they wanna change the world through their research and activities and, uh, and so forth. So it’s been really nice. So for me, it’s been about 16 and a half years, so it’s funny, Jim, to think about like, when I started interacting with you, that was shortly after you came to HMS. So it’s really a small world, but I’m so happy that we got to kind of grow up together, <laugh> in this space.

Jim (11:00): Yeah, being able to, to do this straight out of postdoc, there was a huge learning curve. And one of the things that I wanted to point out with, with what Lauren and I were, were talking about with our relative path is that it wasn’t, we had to explore it, we had to find it, it wasn’t just laid out in front of us, okay, you have an MBA, now you go do this, you have a PhD, now you go do this. And I, I know that for our audiences, relative audience is yours and ours, it’s, it’s very similar. Like, okay, I’m going to undergraduate, I could do these things. I could go pre-med, I could go to graduate school, but we don’t know what’s happening two or three, even five years down the road. So being able to figure that out while still being productive as a student, as a trainee, as a postdoc, you know, it, it’s almost like you have two jobs. You need to figure out what your next job is, but also you have to be productive in, in your fellowship as well.

Emily (11:51): Absolutely. I totally agree. Um, I I think about it the same way of having the academic training aspect of your job and then the professional development and perhaps even job search and pursuit of careers aspect of your job. Um, you just mentioned, Lauren, that it’s a small world and I had the pleasure of meeting both of you in person. Um, within the past year, Jim and I saw one another at NPA, the National Postdoctoral Association Annual Conference. Then Lauren and I saw one another at the graduate career consortium annual meeting, and after that I wanted to set up this podcast interview. But I’m so glad for that timing because right now is a really interesting and critical moment for PhDs in terms of their, anyone who’s looking for a job. Right? <laugh>

Current State of the PhD Job Market

Emily (12:30): We have heard overall in the media that the job market is so difficult right now. And so I want to get an update from you two on how the PhD job market in particular is doing. Because I know from looking at BLS data that, you know, PhDs overall have a really, really low rate of unemployment. And as of the last update, which I looked at, and now we had a government closure in between, but the last jobs update I saw that PhD unemployment has ticked up a little bit, but still very low overall. But Jim, you said to me earlier this year when we met that PhDs are more likely to be underemployed than unemployed, which is also not a great, uh, image. So take this how you will, but I want to hear from each of you like your assessment of the job market right now for PhDs.

Lauren (13:13): Yeah, I I can start on this one and then Jim can, uh, can add, so the job market’s really hard. We actually have a podcast that we put out a few months ago about reasons why the job market is so challenging. There’s financing challenges, all sorts of things that we go into. Uh, it’s a really hard time, especially in life sciences and in high tech in particular. It’s very challenging for people. There’s been a lot of layoffs and reorgs for different reasons. So for people that are currently looking for roles right now that are finishing up graduate school or finishing up their postdoc, there’s so many people on the market, which is making the job market really hard. It’s taking people longer to find roles. People have to be even more persistent in terms of the job search process to find opportunities. And sometimes, you know, at a practicality, people just need a job. And so there’s some cases where people just take a job just to be able to pay rent and things like that as opposed to their ideal job because they just need something. So it’s a, it’s a complicated, we could probably spend like three hours just on that topic, but, but Jim, what, what else do you have to add there

Jim (14:16): For the reasons that you just explained Lauren, but also there are, um, there’s, there’s relative safety and, and that might not be so true nowadays, but traditionally, historically there’s relative safety in academia for many PhDs and postdocs. And they tend to remain in those positions longer or maybe go on the, the job market multiple times, at least historically. Now it is changing because of, of just funding constraints and, and changes in the NIH and and, and changes in indirect costs. And, you know, it costs more now to keep a postdoc and graduate students. But the, the idea is that they stay in positions longer. They might extend their PhD, they might extend their postdoc a year or two, so they don’t go, they don’t finish a fellowship and then go unemployment. So they extend a fellowship. And that’s what I meant by underemployment, where they stay in a position where they’re not advancing. There’s no sort of promotion structure within academia right now, at least for postdocs to continue to advance, uh, within that structure. They’re also may be even under appointed as I as sort of just explains like they, there’s no path of advancement. And then the other thing that, that Lauren kind of hinted at is sometimes they end up taking jobs out of need rather than sort of matching skill sets and advancement that are, tend to be below their skill set or experience level, because again, the fellowship funding is over and they need to find a job rather than launching their career. So there, there tends to be a little bit of underemployment and that it ended up catching up eventually. But there is, you know, there, there is this aspect of academia is this kind of warm, cozy, at least it used to be this warm, cozy place where you could take your time doing research and being productive and getting publications out, and then there’s a kind of a soft launch and or, or whatever on your, your next step of your career. It just sort of extended a little bit. So it’s not, you don’t lead to unemployment ’cause you don’t just lose postdoc jobs. It’s, you end up staying longer and you end up being under, under appointed and underemployed,

Emily (16:19): Except that some postdocs are losing their jobs now. Um, I mean because of funding changes, I actually worked with a university this fall who in the midst of me working with them, they conducted layoffs of their postdocs. So it’s unusual <laugh>. It’s, it’s different than at other times. And I wonder if, I know we could spend so much time on this, but if you had any advice for how PhDs can meet the moment, and I’ll say that in the financial realm, when people are experiencing job loss or financial emergency or anything like that, the advice is kind of like, well, it’s just more important to do all those classic things that you were told to do anyway, right? Like, have the emergency fund and diversify your sources of income and, and be able to cut your expenses if you need to. So I’m wondering, in your sphere, is there any different advice or is it just like, yeah, go listen to all of our podcast archives and just do all the stuff we’ve already been talking about <laugh>

Advice for the Current PhD Job Market

Lauren (17:12): One thing Jim and I say all the time is don’t do this alone. So find resources at your institution, reach out to your network, may- have your materials together, right? You need to have a resume or a CV depending upon what you’re applying to. It needs to be up to date. So if you do have to look for a job quickly, you’ve got something you can share. Otherwise you lose time trying to put it together, cultivating your network, you know, again, like reaching out to people. But when you do that, uh, we did an episode recently in the podcast called Help Me Help You, which was all about if you’re gonna be engaging your network, help them help you, what do you say to them? How do you share information? How do you make it easy for people to help you, especially if you might be in a time crunch due to layoffs, reorgs changes that are unexpected and things like that.

Jim (18:02): Yeah. And, and in, in addition to what Lauren was just talking about, we have to fight the urge or we advise fighting the urge of panicking because, you know, panic is not productive for the most part. Being able to understand the landscape. There’s, there’s e- there’s a, a grieving process that happens, especially if you lose a job. We’re not downplaying that, but it’s not productive to panic and say, oh my gosh, you know, let me send out a whole bunch of, of resumes or applications without actually going through the process. The process might end up being expedited time-wise, you know, instead of three to six months or nine months of exploration, job application and interviewing. You might have a couple weeks, but you still have to go through the steps of doing that. And you have to fight off that panic and realize in the grand scheme of things, a a three month gap or a one month gap or even a six month gap in your employment record is relatively meaningless, especially in academia and moving into industry because those now, you know, industry is, is relatively, there’s, there’s high turnover, you know, and you’re, you’re going to have multiple jobs, maybe even multiple careers. And now in academia, we are now feeling that, as you pointed out, Emily, you know, postdocs are losing their jobs. We are, you know, downsizing in academia, especially in the, the research realm. So we need to remain nimble, but you need to fight off that, that urge to panic and just remember your resources and your network and community.

Emily (19:27): I like that encouragement of just like, there is a process here. Like work the process, like work the steps. Um, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Okay, <laugh> like resources like yours and others that maybe available to people are, are excellent to be accessing at this time.

Lauren (19:40): Well we did a podcast episode recently about the 26 steps in the job search process. <laugh>, I mean, not not to overwhelm people, but it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work to be able to effectively engage in this. So I would say check that out because it could help people start to get a feel for things they could do to help them be productive in the side.

Jim (20:00): Yeah. And, and that list it, it could have been a hundred things and we, we were able to sort of pull that list and, and you know, glean it and, and, and call it. But the idea is that there, the, that there might be, um, maybe healing in that process. Just doing the thing also helps you able to control the controllables. So again, fight the urge of panic but also re remember that there are many things outside of your control in this, in this world and in this process. You, you, you can’t control somebody interviewing you or hiring you, but you can control doing the process. You can control, you know, engaging your, your network. You can control putting out quality applications.

Emily (20:38): I love that. And all the episodes that you mentioned, Lauren and Jim, by the way, will be in the show notes. So anybody looking for that, go to pfforphds.com/podcast. Find this episode and you’ll get all the links to the Propelling Careers podcast.

Pay Transparency Laws and PhD Salary Ranges

Emily (20:51): Okay. I wanna talk a little bit more about finances, specifically within the job search and job application process. Uh, I learned from your podcast that there have been all these new like pay transparency laws in various states that have come into effect. So I want you to explain a little bit about what that means and how PhDs can figure out what is an appropriate, um, salary or salary range for a career that they’re looking for. And also in a specific location. ’cause obviously cost of living is gonna massively change this as well.

Lauren (21:19): So I’ve had the fortunate, uh, nature. So part of what I do in my career is I do recruiting with a few companies and, uh, I’ve had opportunities hands on to actually be a part of some of these pay transparency activities. And so for example, in Massachusetts, October 29th, 2025, the pay transparency law went into effect, which means companies of more than 25 people are supposed to have salary ranges for each role that they post. In California, this went into effect January 1st, 2023. I was recruiting with a company at the time in California. So I was involved in actually posting the salary ranges and I was so nervous to actually put it out there. But it’s been great actually for candidates to have a little more transparency around where they may fall. Now it’s a range, right? So you have, you have, you know, let, let’s say the range might be a hundred to $120,000 for a certain role. Typically people pay kind of in the middle of that range. ’cause you wanna allow people opportunities to be able to grow once they come into an organization. So as a candidate, I would anticipate probably like middle of the range is probably where you should fall for that. As you’re looking at opportunities though, it can be helpful to see the ranges. ’cause then you can start to get a sense of which roles could align to your financial considerations. ’cause there could be some situations where a certain type of role just isn’t gonna align and that’s fine. You can then focus your efforts on ones that are out there. Washington and New York also have pay transparency laws. And you know, one thing that’s helpful to keep in mind is that maybe you live in a state that doesn’t have pay transparency laws. Well, you can still look at states like California, Massachusetts, New York, Washington and start to get an idea potentially of what ranges could be. It may differ a little bit in, you know, the Midwest or the South or something, but at least you may start to see kind of ballparks in certain ranges. The other thing I would say is, you know, when you’re doing informational interviews you can ask people like, do you have an idea of what the salary might be for this particular role? But not just that though, what are the other benefits, right? And we’ll talk more about that, but it’s like the whole package. Don’t be afraid to utilize your network. There’s a few other ideas I have, but I know Jim has some thoughts on this too, in terms of advice he’s given.

Jim (23:37): Yeah, there, there, you know, if in academia, uh, you know, Laura was talking a lot about industry and, and just outside of academia, but there are public institutions, public colleges and universities that have to pay, have to post their salary. So you can get an insight on relative salaries. They’re usually a year or two, sometimes even three years behind. So you can get a a sense, you know, and I know, you know, inflation is, is increasing. So tho those salaries may not be as accurate, but you get a sense of what the range might be depending on, you know, full professor, assistant professor, associate professor, or even, you know, scientific staff or you know, administrators within university. The other thing is, you know, um, the American Association for Medical Colleges, it produces for a fee, a a booklet of salaries across medical schools and medical colleges. So you can get an insight into that. You know, depending on if you are more, more biomedical research and you’re going into a a private medical, um, research institution, you can, you know, basically purchase those, um, you know, those ranges and salaries. But one of the things that, that Lauren already mentioned that’s really effective is when you’re out there gathering information, meeting people and networking, you do these informational interviews and you collect that kind of information, you don’t want to necessarily ask them specifically how much do you make in your role. That is, that tends to be rude, but you can say, how much can I expect in a, you know, in an introductory role or a, a scientist one role at, at your company or in your sector. And they should be able to give you a, a relatively accurate range as well. So, but you, you have that more direct information that, um, you, you could probably trust a bit more than finding stuff on the internet, uh, in indeed.com or Glassdoor or, or salary.com as well.

Lauren (25:28): To build on Jim’s point, some of the other professional organizations have salary guides. So American Chemical Society every couple years does a salary guide. So if you wanna be a chemist in a certain place, you can probably find a range. Uh, the Association of University Tech Transfer Managers also has salary ranges. So maybe some of you listening to this are involved in professional associations. Well ask that association, do you do a salary survey? Because maybe they do and that might help you. And also universities oftentimes collect this information. So if you wanted to move to California, you could do a search of some universities out in California and maybe they’ve compiled a, a information about recent PhD graduates and recent master’s graduates in their location in different sectors. It’s not gonna be perfect, but it may give you an idea of ranges just to be able to help in terms of that information. There’s a lot of information out there, but the source of the information, that’s the important part to make sure that you are seeking sources that are credible. That’s why sometimes Glassdoor and LinkedIn and so forth, sometimes it’s self-reported or made up in other capacities. So you just wanna be careful in terms of where you’re getting that information from.

Jim (26:42): You. You also wanna be careful with, again, the information you gather and you are moving in, in a different geographic area because cost of living varies across the United States and, and obviously the world. So if you gather information about salaries in the Boston area, but you’re moving to Pittsburgh, those numbers are gonna be inflated. Uh, Pittsburgh is generally gonna pay lower, but the cost of living is is cheaper, so your dollar might go a little bit further. So thinking about those aspects as well.

Emily (27:11): This, this is great information, thank you so much. And I, I love that you mentioned like different sort of categories of places that people can go to find this information. And I love the idea of someone starting this very early on like years or more, you know, a year more before they’re actually engaged in a job search process to try to figure out like maybe their own financial expectations and what sectors and what titles kind of align with that. Like for example, I did an interview recently with Dr. Gabrielle Fil- Filip-Crawford, who actually also met at GCC and she was talking about how pay transparency talking with our colleagues about pay helped her understand that she was never going to make enough money inside academia on her faculty track that she was on to satisfy her lifestyle needs and wants. And so it helped her leave that sector entirely and find more remunerative work that was, you know, still in line with what she wanted for her career. And so I just think that’s really, really important that we have realistic and grounded expectations about what different types of careers pay, what different titles pay. Because frankly, as a PhD you have a lot of transferrable skills that are kind of flexible. And so if you could fulfill the, you know, the requirements of roles with a few different titles, like you should look into what those different titles pay and the tracks that they’re on, um, to see, you know, what best aligns with your financial desires as well.

Lauren (28:29): 100%. Exactly. And of course it’s not always just about the money, but the culture and the kind of career trajectory. There’s a lot of things to factor in in terms of taking a role, uh, or not, but finances come into play and you wanna make sure that people are realistic so you can, whatever quality of life you need that you’re able to meet that.

Jim (28:50): Yeah, I agree. Quality of life is, is, is front and center, especially nowadays. We want to be able to, to work, to be able to live, not necessarily live to work for a lot of, a lot of different people.

Commercial

Emily (29:03): Emily here for a brief interlude! Tax season is in full swing, and the best place to go for information tailored to you as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac, is PFforPhDs.com/tax/. From that page I have linked to all of my free tax resources, many of which I have updated for this tax year. On that page you will find podcast episodes, videos, and articles on all kinds of tax topics relevant to PhDs and PhDs-to-be. There are also opportunities to join the Personal Finance for PhDs mailing list to receive PDF summaries and spreadsheets that you can work with. Again, you can find all of these free resources linked from PFforPhDs.com/tax/. Now back to the interview.

Learning About Benefits Information During the PhD Job Search

Emily (29:55): Okay, so we’ve talked about how to work out what kinds of salaries are on different careers and where to locate yourself on a range that you might see. Um, I wanna ask about benefits as well because, you know, certain benefits can be really, really important to people, especially related to like health insurance stuff. Like does this company offer parental leave? Does this company offer, um, you know, a specific medication that I need for a health condition that I have? Um, you know, different things like that. And how can someone who is looking or applying for jobs understand like, is this company even gonna meet, like benefits wise, my expectations? I understand you could probably ask about that very late in the process, like after you’ve gotten an offer, but is there any way to get that information earlier so that you don’t like waste your time maybe pursuing something that is not ultimately gonna work out?

Jim (30:44): So is because of the, the job market being so, um, so difficult at the moment, they want really good candidates and, uh, universities, colleges, um, companies, so on and so forth. If they, they usually put the benefits first and foremost at maybe at the bottom of the job description. They’re very proud to say, we offer, you know, uh, unlimited paid time off. We offer childcare subsidies, we offer commuting subsidies. So there are a lot of things that you can just find in the job description. And if it’s not in the job description, they probably have a why work here website or webpage where you land on. It’s more HR oriented, but you can find a lot of the different types of, of information and benefits, you know, from the job description, the job ad. Usually towards the end you’re like, we are very happy to be family oriented and all of these other things because, you know, the, the audience that, that Lauren and I tend to to work with are early career researchers and mid sort of midlife, mid thirties early or late twenties, early thirties, building their families as well. So the, I think companies are now understanding more than ever that they’re hiring not just the perfect candidate, but also a a a whole person that likely has a family with them.

Lauren (31:57): Yeah. And to, to add to that, I would say, I mean there’s some companies that literally have their entire benefit guide on the website. You can download it, it’s, you know, 45 pages with all the healthcare options, the 401k match, the vacation, the holidays, the cell phone reimbursement, et cetera, et cetera. But you know, also to plug the informational interview, when you talk to people at certain companies, it’s fair to ask, can you share some insights about benefits? Because this is something when I counsel people, and I’m sure Jim, you do too, and Emily for sure, you know, people look at the sal- the base salary and they’re either happy or sad depending upon what their expectations were. But then I always advise people, make a list of everything, right? The base salary is a hundred grand, okay, is there a bonus? Is there cell phone reimbursement? Is there commuter reimbursement? Is there like lunch provided a couple times a week, uh, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I’ve had situations where the base salary is a hundred thousand dollars, but the total package is actually like $135,000 because of the extra things associated with the offer. So that’s where it’s really helpful as a candidate to make sure you’re looking at the entire package. Plus, of course, what’s the culture like, what’s the work-life balance like, what’s the enjoyment of the role? Those are a little bit intangible, but also super important as you consider what’s gonna be the next best fit for you?

Emily (33:27): Is it appropriate to ask generally? Can you tell me about the benefits? ’cause obviously people probably in the interview process don’t necessarily wanna reveal oh yeah, I’m thinking about having a baby soon. Like yeah, I have a chronic medical condition, or, you know, whatever the case is.

Lauren (33:40): I think it’s fair to ask and, and I, I know, so in the recruiting work I do, typically after the first discussion, I’ll send people a summary of the details, but if, if you don’t get sent that I would ask it because these things are important. You don’t wanna get to the end of the interview and realize that the company doesn’t have things you need because then you just spent a lot of time and a lot of their time interviewing for a role that then is not gonna be a fit. So I love just being open and honest <laugh> and just asking for what you need and hopefully the organizations you are interviewing with will be able to provide information.

Jim (34:11): Yeah, it may not be your leading question. Be like, you know, when you first get in, what are the, what are the benefits? And it may not be the central question, but when given the opportunity, or maybe as you’re rounding out the interview or the discussion, be like, would you mind sharing, you know, the, the benefits package or, or a more information about benefits as well? Because during the interview it’s more about fit and work and, and connection and, and sharing your experience and credentials, but benefits will play a huge part in the actual decision if an offer is tendered.

Free Career Search and Career Development Resources for PhDs

Emily (34:43): You all mentioned earlier, um, graduate students and postdocs accessing resources related to career search and career development at their own institutions. Um, I’m wondering for people who have already, maybe they’re aware of that resource or maybe they’re no longer affiliated with institutions, so they don’t have access to those kinds of offices anymore. Um, what kinds of free resources are available? I mean, we know about your podcast, but anything else? And then is there ever a point when a person should consider paying for professional services or a course or anything like that?

Jim (35:16): So I, I know Lauren and I, we tend to align with, with some of this, uh, this interaction and, you know, the feedback and advice. But I do want to reiterate, even though, you know, people might not be still affiliated with in-, with institutions or schools or colleges, they are still alums of those schools and colleges and can go back as an alumni to maybe access career services, career offices. So you, you can still have some access, it might be limited, but there are also other offices that, you know, like mine, you know, especially, you know, if a postdoc is transitioning out and their end date is, um, I don’t know, a week from now, I’m not gonna turn them away in seven or eight days after their, their appointment ends. They can continue to come back as they’re transitioning out. So there, there’s also workforce development. Again, thinking about if you’re transitioning out, you can really leverage and access all of those resources. If you’re being terminated or you’re actually on your way out, you can tool up. But don’t forget that you are an alum of schools and universities where you paid probably thousands upon thousands of dollars. They still, you know, give you access to their, their, you know, uh, alumni office as well as their, the career services office. Other resources that I really like are kind of like, you know, um, communication, leadership, you know, emotional, uh, intelligence assessments. Those tend to be free. You, you can go to a, a coach and a professional and pay for those services and get, you know, um, some help unpacking some of those things. But there are a lot of those are free and the explanations are pretty clear and straightforward and it allows you to understand how you communicate and how others communicate and how things land for you. Where you can then stretch yourself into different personality types or with different personality types. Uh, I, so those are kind of the, some of the free stuff that you can get into, but you can pay to do some of those things like strengths finders or Clifton strengths. You, you, you have to, you know, buy the book for strengths finders and then you have access to like your top five strengths, but you could pay someone to sort of coach you on those things as well. And I know Lauren has a lot more information and insight as well.

Lauren (37:26): Totally. I mean, one, uh, one free thing that I often suggest to people is the myIDP by Science Careers. It, it was a tool, uh, meant mostly for biomedical and biosciences, uh, graduate students, but it could be used by other people as well. These, some of these things are transferable to other disciplines, physics and, and, and others. Uh, but you know, you put in your interest skills values and then it rank orders one of 20 career paths that could be a fit. Doesn’t mean you have to do patent law if that comes up first, but it can be a nice way to start to understand, oh wow, if I have these interests in skills, those writing careers or outreach careers or entrepreneurship careers or whatever seem to be a fit. Sometimes people just need a little bit of insight and then it can launch this whole new area that’s out there. Um, on the, you know, on the paid, uh, coaching side. I mean certainly some people need a ton of help in terms of tailoring the resumes, interview prep and things like that. So there are coaches out there that can help. The key is make sure you find a coach that’s appropriate in terms of background, expertise, even level of people that they’ve engaged with. I, I’ve had a few people recently that have come to me ’cause I do some coaching work with people and they may have gone to someone that just coaches like executive level people and here’s someone that’s just coming outta their PhD, that coach may not have the right type of advice ’cause they’re not used to working with people at more of the entry level. They’re used to working with people that are more seasoned or I’ve had people that have gotten career coaches, but they coach people in different industries. And so like the cosmetics industry is definitely way different than life sciences, which is way different than data science. So it can be really helpful to do your due diligence to make sure if you are paying for coaching services and career advice services, that you are paying for the right, the right information and the right, uh, the items to be able to make sure it’s actually useful for you.

Jim (39:20): And, and it might be helpful in the short term, very near term, you might, you might pay someone for a couple of sessions and then you, you’re on the path to, to success or you might buy a subscription for a month or a couple weeks to, uh, job, job listings or even like LinkedIn, you know, uh, uh, you know, high level. So, but it should not be a long term or, or a forever type of situation. But you know, there are times where you might need that extra help and you can’t find it for free and you need to reach out and have someone or some, some, uh, resource that actually is a paid resource, but it should not be necessarily a long-term commitment.

Lauren (39:59): I know in Massachusetts there’s even these like mentorship networks. I’ve been a mentor for at least 10 of the last 15 years for the Massachusetts chapter of Association of Women in Science. So they have a year long mentorship program. You pay a small amount of money to be a part of it, but then you get someone like me giving you advice every month about, you know, your career, how do you navigate things, how do you build resumes, how do you job search? So just I would say be resourceful. ’cause there could be a lot out there. It’s just sometimes you don’t always know where to begin. So that’s where ask your network, you know, engage with people so that way you’re not doing this alone.

Emily (40:33): Yeah, I just wanna underline that, that like, clearly there are so many either free or near free or hey, you already paid for this in the past, so let’s just keep using it, uh, resources available, go to those first by all means. But I can imagine there are some people who, like this job searching has gone on for like a long time and anything that they need to do to truncate the end of this and just get into a position might, you know, might be worth the investment. Is there anything else that you’d like to tell us about the financial side of job seeking and job interviewing?

Additional Insights About the Financial Side of the PhD Job Market

Jim (41:03): There is a cost, time and financial and resource when going on the market. You might have to invest in new interview materials, like maybe a printer or a new laptop or professional clothing or outfits, maybe microphones or, or you know, you know, headsets for phone interviews or, or zoom interviews. But also you might want to understand how if you’re traveling for the job or traveling for the interview, how that reimbursement or payment or upfront, you know, scheduling will, will impact your finances because sometimes you are, you don’t have a ton of money and they want you to pay for the flight and they’ll reimburse you afterwards. Or the pay for the hotel and flight, they’ll reimburse you afterwards that, that could be two, $3,000 very quickly where they reimburse you 30, 60 or 90 days later. So, uh, again, just understanding that there’s an actual cost, not just your time because going on the job market is a timely cost. It’s a almost a second job, but there are these, you know, these little purchases that tend to add up that, that you could be in a thousands of dollars just going on the market, buying new clothes, buying new materials and, and actually traveling.

Emily (42:17): Great point that in the event of job loss, your emergency fund is not just there to pay for your ongoing living expenses, but you may have increased expenses to engage in this as well. Thank you.

Lauren (42:27): And I know we touched briefly on this, but I, I just wanna reinforce this point. When you look at the actual salary, just don’t look at the actual salary <laugh>, look at the benefits, the entire package because that will help you get a better understanding of if you end up having a few job offers, which one’s going to be the best fit. I just, I urge people make a spreadsheet, I’m sure Emily, you probably love spreadsheets to keep track of things so you can really compare apples to apples if you’re lucky enough to get a few offers and know you have to know what your like turn, turn away point is, right? If, if you need a certain amount of money to be able to live, then you need to know that. So then if a job doesn’t cover that, then you may have to say no, even though the role could be amazing, you don’t wanna take something knowing that you’re going to be in a negative financial situation starting from day one. So these are sometimes really hard discussions to have with people, but it’s really important to be honest so that way you can find a role and be able to focus on the role and not be stressed out about not being able to have proper finances.

Emily (43:33): And this may be a concept that is unfamiliar to people coming out of graduate school or the postdoc that you should feel financially supported in the role that you’re in. Absolutely. Thank you so much for those, um, concluding words. Where can people find Propelling Careers?

Lauren (43:48): We have our podcast on Spotify and Apple podcasts, and again, our podcast is free <laugh>, we have at the end of 2025, we’ll have 88 episodes. We have a ton of content and hopefully all of you find it valuable as you peruse.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (44:04): Excellent. And I wanna end here by asking each of you the question I ask of all my interviewees, which is, what is your best financial advice for an early career PhD? And that could be something that we’ve touched on in the interview already, or it could be something completely new,

Jim (44:17): Right? It for me, it’s a combination of what we, we, we’ve already talked about is it it, and it’s a two-parter. Don’t do this alone. Use all of your resources to understand the, the cost, uh, of, of transitioning finding jobs and being successful in your career, but also understand and know the true cost of living in an area that you might be moving to. And that was, you know, Lauren, you know, talked about, you know, moving to a job and, and not realizing how much it cost. And and that’s something that actually happened. It, we got sticker shock when we moved up to here from Frederick Maryland to Boston. Uh, uh, it was a, a jump in salary, but it was not actually enough. And I didn’t realize that until after the fact. And it set us back several years in our finances to then catch up. And I think I still feel that we are actually behind where we would’ve been if we did actually just stayed in Frederick, uh, at points.

Lauren (45:08): And from my standpoint, so I see some people, they finish their PhD or postdoc and they get a job offer from a large pharma company and they go out and buy a new car, they get a nicer apartment maybe in the seaport of Boston and it’s like, don’t blow all your cash <laugh> right away. Like it could be really helpful to still live below your means so you can save some money so you can have a rainy day fund. You never know what might happen in the future. So it’s just as much as you may want to buy when you see your first check, like buy all this nice stuff, try to hesitate on that <laugh>. So, so that way it just allows you a little more freedom in the future.

Emily (45:48): There’s a big difference between splurging on a one-time purchase and splurging on something that’s gonna cost you some more money every single month going forward. So you’re absolutely preaching to the choir here. I love it. Thank you so much for this wonderful interview. I hope everybody goes and checks out your podcast. Thank you so much for joining me.

Jim (46:05): Thank you Emily.

Lauren (46:06): Thank you Emily.

Outro

Emily (46:17): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

How to Negotiate Your Salary Post-PhD

September 8, 2025 by Jill Hoffman 1 Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Kate Sleeth, the founder of EduKatedSTEM, on salary negotiation for PhDs. They discuss why everyone should negotiate salary and why Kate regrets not negotiating in her first position in academia. Kate teaches how someone should calculate their minimum salary number before going into a negotiation, including the free tools to use. They wrap up with Kate’s best single tip regarding the negotiation process and her best financial advice, both of which are straightforward to implement.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Teaser

Kate (00:00): The negotiation begins when you apply. I don’t think a lot of people realize that, but there is always going to be a question, how much are you currently making? And how much do you hope to receive should you receive, you know, get this job. And so you need to know a number or something to put in that as you apply for the role. So you actually need to do your homework before you hit submit on the application.

Introduction

Emily (01:03): This is Season 22, Episode 2, and today my guest is Dr. Kate Sleeth, the founder of EduKatedSTEM. Our conversation revolves around salary negotiation for PhDs. We discuss why everyone should negotiate salary and why Kate regrets not negotiating in her first position in academia. Kate teaches how someone should calculate their minimum salary number before going into a negotiation, including the free tools to use. We wrap up with Kate’s best single tip regarding the negotiation process and her best financial advice, both of which are straightforward to implement.

Emily (01:42): Let’s talk fellowship taxes for a minute here. These action items are for you if you recently switched or will soon switch onto non-W-2 fellowship income as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac; you are a US citizen, resident, or resident for tax purposes; and you are not having income tax withheld from your stipend or salary. Action item #1: Fill out the Estimated Tax Worksheet on page 8 of IRS Form 1040-ES. This worksheet will estimate how much income tax you will owe in 2025 and tell you whether you are required to make manual tax payments on a quarterly basis. The next quarterly estimated tax due date is September 15, 2025. Action item #2: Whether you are required to make estimated tax payments or pay a lump sum at time tax, open a separate, named savings account for your future tax payments. Calculate the fraction of each paycheck that will ultimately go toward tax and set up an automated recurring transfer from your checking account to your tax savings account to prepare for that bill. This is what I call a system of self-withholding, and I suggest putting it in place starting with your very first fellowship paycheck so that you don’t get into a financial bind when the payment deadline arrives.

Emily (03:07): If you need some help with the Estimated Tax Worksheet or want to ask me a question, please consider joining my workshop, Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients. It explains every line of the worksheet and answers the common questions that PhD trainees have about estimated tax. The workshop includes 1.75 hours of video content, a spreadsheet, and invitations to at least one live Q&A call each quarter this tax year. The next Q&A call is on Friday, September 12, 2025. If you want to purchase this workshop as an individual, go to PF for PhDs dot com slash Q E tax. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s22e2/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Kate Sleeth of EduKatedSTEM.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (04:12): I am delighted to have on the podcast today Dr. Kate Sleeth, the founder of EduKatedSTEM. And Kate and I actually met last spring, we’re recording this interview in August, 2025, but we met at the National Postdoctoral Association annual meeting in March, 2025. And I went to Kate’s talk on negotiation, and I knew immediately that she had to come on the podcast and share a number of her insights with you. Now, I wanna give you a warning that Kate and I could talk for hours about our subject today, which is negotiation of salaries. Um, but we’re not going to, because this is a brief podcast episode. So if you want more from Kate, she gives workshops. She can work with you as an individual. She has follow-up resources, so I’m gonna have her point to all that stuff later. So we’re just giving you a teaser into this topic today. So Kate, again, welcome to the podcast. Would you please give us some more background about your career and what EduKatedSTEM is?

Kate (05:07): Thanks, Emily. Thank you for having me. Uh, so I, uh, was a scientist. I was a biochemist. I have a PhD. Uh, my thesis was on, uh, DNA repair mechanisms, and I did three postdocs. So I’m a very experienced postdoc person, and, um, I have experience in both the UK and America. I moved to LA to do my third and final postdoc, and then I moved into a graduate school administration. So I went from a lower administrator all the way through to being the Associate Dean of Administration and student Development. And it was over that time that I got interested in giving, um, webinars, seminars, things like that on a variety of topics. Negotiation being the one that everybody is always excited about. Um, and EduKatedSTEM is an offshoot of that, that I thought I could help more people. So I have a YouTube channel where I put up advice on various things. Again, I have a series on negotiation up there, um, and I go in, as you said, I give, I give, um, talks at conferences and, uh, also, uh, universities, things like that. So I will be, uh, talking at SACNAS if everyone’s coming to SACNAS later in the year. Oddly enough, I’m not talking about negotiation at that one. Um, but I, uh, will be talking if people are at that meeting.

How Negotiation Became a Passion for Dr. Kate Sleeth

Emily (06:27): Beautiful. Thank you so much. And, um, let’s get more of like your sort of personal story into how this became a passion point for you when you first started teaching more and more about negotiation.

Kate (06:40): So negotiation is something that everybody needs to learn how to do, right? We all wanna make more money or have, um, better things to do with our job, whether that’s more days off or, um, the ability to work remotely at times, uh, and other things, you have to ask that during the negotiation if you hope to receive them. And so, whilst I was a postdoc and whilst I was a lower administrator, I saw a lot of people talk about negotiation. And it was always lots of acronyms and it was very theory based and they didn’t really tell you, this is how you do it. These are the tools that you use and this is how you structure it. And I thought, well, there has to be an easier way, a more straightforward way of explaining how to do the negotiation. So I read a few books around the topic.

Kate (07:30): I saw some, um, presentations that I thought did a little bit more than the average. You know, this is the BATNA, these are the acronyms. And I was like, no, I’m gonna make my own. And it’s completely tailored. What you saw, um, in the spring at the NPA was tailored to a postdoc audience, um, in the city that we were in. And so whenever I come to an institution, whether that’s over a webinar or in person, I talk about that location. So all of the examples I use are for either, depending on the audience, a postdoc, graduate student, whatever, at that location. And then I talk about jobs that they might want to go to, cities that they might want to move to. And it’s all relevant, all of the searches that I’ve done within the past week. So the information I’m showing is absolutely relevant at the time that I’m showing it.

Kate (08:23): Um, and realistically, I did not do well at my first negotiation. Obviously as a postdoc, you don’t negotiate, really, there isn’t a lot you can do. When I moved into the role as an administrator, I was on a visa and they said that they were going to support my green card application and ’cause of the expense of that they were gonna to reduce my salary because they would be paying for my green card. And that affected every single salary negotiation after that because obviously the lower you come in, um, the, the higher the increases you need to be to kind of bring you back to where you should be. Um, and in the end, they didn’t pay for my green card <laugh>. So learn from that, um, and negotiate appropriately because I could have said, no, I, I understand you’re gonna be paying for my green card, but I ought to be being paid a higher amount even with that because that definitely impacted every single salary negotiation and, um, promotion that I ever received.

Why Is Negotiation Important?

Emily (09:28): And your leading directly into where I wanted to go with this next part of the conversation, which is why should people negotiate? You’ve just given us one reason is that, that at least as long as you stay with the same organization, that level that you come in, go in on, is going to inform every single salary you receive at that organization for the rest of your time there. So that’s one reason. Let’s start off as high as <laugh> we reasonably can here, but what are some other reasons or motivations for negotiation?

Kate (09:57): Um, so obviously, yes, you obviously want more money. More money is always lovely, um, but it’s going to help people who come into your role after you leave because they always look at the previous person’s history. And if you negotiate a higher salary, the person after you will hopefully also get the highest salary. So if it’s hard for you to think, I need to negotiate from me personally, be altruistic and think about the people who are following you afterwards, you’re gonna have help them kind of give them a leg up.

Emily (10:30): I really loved when I heard you point that out. It wasn’t a a, a phrasing or an angle on that that I had quite heard of or thought about before. But I realized that, so I, when I speak about negotiation, which is not that often ’cause it’s not really my area of expertise, I do it more in the grad student realm because as you said, postdocs, it’s not that usual to negotiate graduate students. It’s even more unusual, yet some people do it. And this is one of the reasons why I think that people should at least try is because you’re communicating, you’re signaling to that person on the other side of the table from you. It is important that I, and people in my position are compensated appropriately. So please consider increasing my stipend. But really that bleeds over into your peers and the people who follow you. It just, you signaling that this is an important area that you value, that you, you know, you wanna be paid reasonably well. So I really love that point. Think about the person following you in the position after you, yeah, the budget for that position is gonna be expanded if you’re successful in your negotiation.

Kate (11:25): Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yeah, it’s a key thing. And also it makes you feel more appreciated because if you don’t negotiate and you come in thinking that you’ve got a great salary and there’s other people who have maybe even the same title and role and position as you, and you find out they’re, I dunno, anywhere between five and 20,000 more than you, you’re not going to feel appreciated. And you know, the company didn’t do anything wrong. They obviously want to bring you in as cheaply as possible because they want to save money. It’s not necessarily a good thing, but it’s, it’s the reality of the situation. And so they are trying to negotiate you down. You want to try and negotiate your worth and show them the skills that you, you’re bringing to the table and therefore you earn hopefully more money. Um, but if you don’t do that at the beginning and you find out that other people are earning potentially significantly more than you, you’re not gonna feel appreciated. You may start looking for a different role somewhere else.

Emily (12:28): And that’s one of the reasons why actually like you, the job candidate, um, and also the employer, that’s actually an area where you two are aligned. You both want you to be happy in that role. And compensation is part of that because turnover is so expensive for companies. And so it’s really in their best interest to keep you happy with your compensation so that you have longevity there. Are there any other, uh, reasons for negotiation that you’d like to add?

Kate (12:54): So the other reason to negotiate is it’s just good practice. And it’s something that I talk about in my presentation. You negotiate all the time. It’s just not necessarily for a salary or for benefits. So even if you’re talking with someone about your plans for this evening, what restaurant you want to go to, what movie you want to see, you are negotiating hopefully to get what you want. And so it will definitely help. And you need to practice before you go in to get comfortable with the idea of asking for more money. And you’re not going to say that you are entitled to to more money or you deserve more money. You’re gonna be very polite about it and deferential, but you will make sure that the person that you’re talking to understands that you would appreciate to receive more money or benefits or whatever.

Kate (13:44): It’s, and you have to remember a lot of the time, the person that you’re negotiating with doesn’t necessarily have the power to make those decisions. So if you upset them, they are not going to go back to the person who does have the power and advocate on your behalf to get you more of whatever it is that you want. So it’s good practice, it will help you in everyday life if you can kind of keep cool and measured and just ask for what you want. Um, and I, I think even if you are talking about a part-time job, you know, you can always say, I was hoping for a little bit more money or however you want to phrase it, and you may, you may get it, you never know.

Emily (14:24): I think this is such an important point about you want, probably the person that needs to say that you’re negotiating with still has a chain of command. They have to run this up. And so you want them on your side, you wanna understand what their motivations are and you know, realize what you have in common and how it’s important that you can work together to get what you want, a higher salary or their benefits or whatever it’s going to be. But yeah, you want them to be your champion. So of course you have to do this in a very, um, socially aware kind of way. Um, so wonderful tip.

Emily (14:56): Um, the next thing that I wanna talk about, I, I’m skipping over something. Okay, so what was great about the talk of yours that I saw at NPA is that you were discussing how to understand, um, you know, typical compensation for various different types of jobs in different areas of the country. So like the salary research aspect of this. And this is a very important component of the negotiation process because um, you have to know what the positions typically pay, why you might be making more or less than what is average and and so forth. So it’s very important to understand the market and when you go into a negotiation, your basis for negotiation is what you’re bringing to the role.

Commercial

Emily (15:38): Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, budgeting, investing, and goal-setting, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2025-2026 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker or facilitator to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, or postdoc office? My seminars are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutes enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

Identifying Your Personal Minimum Salary Number

Emily (16:57): However, there is a back part of this calculation. That’s what we’re going to talk about in the interview next, which is how much do I as a job candidate actually want and need to make irrespective of what the job type pays you as a person have a number that you would like to make and you know, hopefully that job will typically pay you more than that personal number that you need, but you at least need to know the number because when you go into that negotiation process, you need to know what number we are not gonna go below. For sure. So in your talk you discuss the salary research that is so important. We’re skipping over it right now. We’re not doing it in this interview. Where we’re gonna focus on instead is that personal part of it, understanding what your number is. So can you tell us more about how you teach people that part of the process? How do they come up with their own personal minimum salary number?

Kate (17:48): So a lot of the time it’s on your budget. So I always encourage the first thing you do before you apply for a job, before you have a major life change. So a marriage, a divorce, getting a pet, getting um, uh, you know, having children. Make sure you know how much money you need to survive. So I have a budget, you can go in and download it and um, I want you to be brutal, brutally honest about what you spend, because I’ve done this with undergrads and they are potentially spending their parents’ cash. So they are less realistic about how much money they would like to earn. Like I’ve done this and they’ve come out and said I need to make a starting salary of at least $150,000 because I can’t give up <laugh> um, you know, my food delivery costs, I go out multiple times a week and all of these other things. And I’m just looking at them thinking, wow, as an, as a recent undergraduate with your, with your degree, you are hoping to make 150,000. Like you need a decent reality check. So go through, you know, your rent and all of those things know exactly how much you need to survive and that is the number that you cannot possibly go beneath because if you don’t make that, you can’t pay all of your bills, you can’t pay back any debt that you might have, that is absolutely the lowest that you can go. But you might not decide that that is the lowest that you are willing to take. So during your, um, your research and whenever you apply for a job, you are gonna do some research. There are many different websites that you can use. My personal favorite, um, tends to be salary.com, but there are others out there.

Kate (19:41): I’ll just mention some. Um, you have Indeed, obviously you have salary.com, which is what I use all the time. Salary Expert, Payscale, MyPlan.com. And then if you are thinking about moving location, you then need to do a cost of living comparison. And again, lots of those websites also have it. Salary.com has it. That’s what I use. And what you do is you put in where you are currently living, the salary that the job might have where you’re currently living and then you know, I’m thinking about moving to insert city and it will literally come back and, and it will tell you, you know, the city that you’re considering moving to is either more or less expensive than where you’re, so if it’s more expensive, it will tell you you need to make this much money in order to maintain the standard of life that you’ve currently got.

Kate (20:35): And obviously if you’re going to somewhere that is cheaper, then you’ll have a better standard of living. But that is definitely something to consider because I live in Los Angeles and if you, you move to LA you can definitely get sticker shock because everything here is so much more expensive. I think there’s only San Francisco and New York that are definitely more expensive to live in. Uh, but there’s some cities that are also somewhat close. But I always use moving to LA as my example because everyone is always like, Ooh, yes, you know, you can have the job, but usually the the increase in salary may or may not be equivalent to what you need to maintain your standard of living if you move here. And that’s just something that you need to consider because if you are taking a promotion, if you’re moving somewhere you hope you have more money, you have a better quality of life, that you can have more savings.

Emily (21:34): Absolutely. You always have to put those numbers in the context of the local cost of living. I totally agree. Um, and I actually wanted to expand a little bit more on what you just said about well maybe you actually want to increase your lifestyle <laugh> as you move along in your career. And I especially think about this in the transitions from, you know, graduate student to postdoc, from postdoc to having a proper permanent post PhD job maybe as you receive promotions later on. Um, because I think where you started was absolutely correct. Let’s take what we’re currently spending, you know, multiply that by that by some factor, you know, depending on where you’re moving, that’s a minimum. Well, okay, but who wants to live that grad student lifestyle forever and ever? Probably no one. And I do think it’s appropriate as you make more money to increase your lifestyle, not mindlessly inflate your lifestyle, but add in some specific things that are really important to you. Like you mentioned, you know, family formation, maybe you wanna buy a home. These things are expensive and you may want them later in your life. So I would say when you’re building that budget, you know, start where you are, but then also add in those line items or those increases for what you want in your next stage of life. Um, and one other small point there is your tax burden will change as you move along in your career. Specifically as a graduate student, you’re not paying social security and medicare tax. You will be paying those later on if you have a proper W2 job. Um, your student loans may go from being in deferment to being in repayment and you have to factor that into, so there are some expenses that just naturally come in when you change stages. So I just wanted to point that out too, like take that minimum number, but why don’t we add on to that minimum number too <laugh>.

Kate (23:11): So there’s another free tool that you can use, which is called PaycheckCity.com. And I would encourage you to go and look at it and you can put in how much the salary that you are going to hopefully be making is. And it will tell you these are the taxes that will be coming out. You can literally change the state that you are in and you can say whether you’ve got family or not. And it will tell you what your final take home pay is going to be, which is something that I don’t think a lot of people realize. I know that the first time I got taxed I was like, ooh, ooh, I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all. Um, but it’s something that, that has to be paid. So I always say go to salary.com and do your, um, the salary that you want, the cost of living comparison, and then head over to PaycheckCity and figure out exactly what your take home pay is gonna be.

Emily (24:06): Yes, <laugh>. Exactly. I moved, um, post-graduate school, moved to Washington State, which is a zero income tax state, and then to California, which I have not found to be overly burdensome, but is a higher income tax state. So very, very worth, you know, those considerations as you’re moving to different locales. Um, excellent, excellent. Thank you so much for pointing to those tools. I think those are gonna be super helpful for our audience who you know is in these various stages. Um, okay, we’re gonna get back to negotiation now. I want you to give us just one tip about the negotiation process. ’cause I know you could give a whole presentation on this, but let’s just leave our listeners with one concrete takeaway.

Negotiation Begins Before You Submit Your Application

Kate (24:46): So I think you need to realize that the negotiation begins when you apply. I don’t think a lot of people realize that, but there is always going to be a question, how much are you currently making and how much do you hope to receive should you receive, you know, get this job. And so you need to know a number or something to put in that as you apply for the role. So you actually need to do your homework before you hit submit on the application. And I don’t think a lot of people know that. I always advise that if you can write something in that, then you write something like salary commensurate to my skills. Uh, but most HR people don’t like that because you’re not giving them a number and some application systems actually force you to insert a number. And so I always say you could always insert a range if you can do that, but you need to know what that range is. So I can do these searches very, very quickly and I always think if it takes 10, 15 minutes of your time to then make a knowledgeable application at the beginning and it will then help you potentially earn, I don’t know, five, 10, $20,000 more, how much is that 10 minutes worth to you? Because it’s necessary if you’re going to be successful at the negotiation.

Emily (26:05): Very good point. And that research has to happen at some point in the process anyway. You’re just getting a jump on it when you do the application part. And I totally think for those different, um, suggestions, like if you can enter text <laugh>, enter text, if you can enter a range, enter a range, well if they force you into a number, you know, it has to be in the range that they’re thinking to, right? So it’s gotta be in there. So that’s an excellent tip. And I know from, I guess my study of negotiation overall is like, um, nobody wants to throw out their first number <laugh>, so they’re kind of forcing you to do it. So any way you can get out of it, get out of it, but if you have to do it, you need to know what’s reasonable. So thank you so much. Um, where can people follow up with you, learn more from you book you, where can they find you and follow up resources?

Connect with Dr. Kate Sleeth

Kate (26:48): So I have a website which is EduKatedSTEM.com, and it’s with a K EduKatedSTEM. Um, I’m on YouTube under the same handle. I’m on Instagram, um, blue sky, Twitter, all of those good things. If you want to specifically get the things that I do for negotiation, um, I’m happy to come in and obviously present at your location, but if you are kind of stuck and like, oh my gosh, I’m about to negotiate, I just need some help right now, obviously I will advise you in person, but you can go and download my budget template, my negotiation, um, little kind of worksheets, which I think is is very short. I’ve taken, you know, many books and I’ve smashed it down. And so I think it’s 15 pages of just the highlights that you absolutely need. And there’s also a video of me giving the presentation that I give, um, and that’s available for a whole $5 on Patreon. So pretty darn cheap. Um, if you, if you want that,

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (27:53): Hmm. If you actually applied, uh, 1% of what you learned, you would, um, make that over in orders of magnitude, I’m sure. Um, excellent. Kate, thank you so much. And I’m gonna ask you the question that I ask of all of my guests, which is, what is your best financial advice for an early career PhD? And that can be something that we’ve touched on in the interview already, or it could be something completely new.

Kate (28:16): So I’m going to give you, um, the advice that my husband will appreciate <laugh>, because when I met him, I was a postdoc and a financial advisor. So his first question was, how much money are you saving? And I chuckled and said, I’m a postdoc living in LA clearly not a lot if at all. And he was horrified. And so he started getting me to put just a little way a a little sum every paycheck. And then if I got a pay increase, once I started moving into, uh, the administrative roles, every time I got a pay increase, a portion of that went into savings. So I did get a little bit more spending money, but not the whole lot. And that made it much easier. And within a very short period of time, my savings had bloomed. Uh, so not only was I putting into my, um, 401, is it called a 401k, right? That’s what you call it in America. Um, so I hadn’t been doing that and he was utterly horrified. And so I started putting money in my 401, and then in addition I also started putting money into savings. And it just, it just helps. It’s, it, what’s the, I can’t think what the word is, compounds it. The, the amount compounds so you get more money. So the earlier you start, the more money you have at the end. And I can’t believe that that is the advice, advice that I’m giving because he would be so happy <laugh>. But it’s, it’s a really important thing. And as a postdoc, I just didn’t think I earned enough money to do that. And he just sat me down and was like, at some point, you’re gonna be old and you are going to need money. Thank you honey. Very blunt. Um, and so yes, it kind of hurts the first few months and then you get used to it and then it’s really hard not to touch that money because you’re like, Ooh, I really want that thing and I’ve got the cash right here. Um, but you are thinking about your future self and your future self. Well, thank you. When you’re older and you have a cushion.

Emily (30:20): Absolutely. I mean, it’s excellent advice and I, I like hearing it from you as like, I mean, obviously you’re teaching negotiation, but not as a natural personal finance person, right? Like, you learn this from the person who became your husband and you implemented it in a time when you didn’t think you could. And I think that’s so common before we start saving in an intentional way. We always think it’s impossible. I thought the same thing. So, but it’s like, well, like he said, at some point you just have to do it because your future self needs this money. So just get started and like you said, in a small way and as you progress through your career, as we’ve been talking about, you negotiate for more, you put part of that raise, you know, increase your savings rate, part of is spend on lifestyle. Perfect. Perfect. Everybody’s happy. So I love that advice. Kate, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It was a pleasure to meet you at NPA and I’m so glad we got to record this, uh, conversation from my audience.

Kate (31:09): Thank you for having me, Emily.

Outro

Emily (31:21): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

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.

Commercial

Emily (19:32): Do you know what’s even scarier than an upcoming committee meeting the prospect of preparing your tax return? But it doesn’t have to be that way. I’ve created a variety of free and paid resources to help you get through tax season with as little pain as possible. These resources are specifically for grad students and fellowship recipients, post back through postdoc, check them out at pfforphds.com/tax.

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.

salary

Links mentioned in the Episode

Teaser

Introduction

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Current State of the PhD Job Market

Advice for the Current PhD Job Market

Pay Transparency Laws and PhD Salary Ranges

Commercial

Learning About Benefits Information During the PhD Job Search

Free Career Search and Career Development Resources for PhDs

Additional Insights About the Financial Side of the PhD Job Market

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Outro

Links mentioned in the Episode

Teaser

Introduction

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

How Negotiation Became a Passion for Dr. Kate Sleeth

Why Is Negotiation Important?

Commercial

Identifying Your Personal Minimum Salary Number

Negotiation Begins Before You Submit Your Application

Connect with Dr. Kate Sleeth

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Outro

Links mentioned in episode

Teaser

Introduction

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Future of Research Nonprofit

What is a Postdoc?

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

What Position Counts as an Employee or Not an Employee?

What Did You Do for the Postdoc Salaries Project?

Commercial

Analysis and Findings from the From the Postdoc Salaries Project

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

Conclusion

Employee or Fellow?

Income and FICA Taxes

Health Insurance

Student Loans

Cost of Living

Personal Experience with the Transition to a Postdoc Position

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