PREreviews of “American postdoctoral salaries do not account for growing disparities in cost of living” | PREreview

Skip to preprint details Skip to PREreviews

American postdoctoral salaries do not account for growing disparities in cost of living

by Tim Sainburg

Posted: May 25, 2022
Server: arXiv
DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2205.12892

Abstract

The National Institute of Health (NIH) sets postdoctoral (postdoc) trainee stipend levels that many American institutions and investigators use as a basis for postdoc salaries. Although salary standards are held constant across universities, the cost of living in those universities' cities and towns vary widely. Across non-postdoc jobs, more expensive cities pay workers higher wages that scale with an increased cost of living. This work investigates the extent to which postdoc wages account for cost-of-living differences. More than 27,000 postdoc salaries across all US universities are analyzed alongside measures of regional differences in cost of living. We find that postdoc salaries do not account for cost-of-living differences, in contrast with the broader labor market in the same cities and towns. Despite a modest increase in income in high cost of living areas, real (cost of living adjusted) postdoc salaries differ by 29% ($15k 2021 USD) between the least and most expensive areas. Cities that produce greater numbers of tenure-track faculty relative to students such as Boston, New York, and San Francisco are among the most impacted by this pay disparity. The postdoc pay gap is growing and is well-positioned to incur a greater financial burden on economically disadvantaged groups and contribute to faculty hiring disparities in women and racial minorities.

Read the preprint

1 Rapid PREreview

by Gary S McDowell

Where can I fill out a Rapid PREreview?

We’ve recently replaced Rapid PREreviews with Structured PREreviews.

You can write a Structured PREreview now.

We’ll be updating older Rapid PREreviews like these soon.

Aggregated Rapid PREreviews
Question	Yes	Unsure	N/A	No
Are the findings novel?	100%	0%	0%	0%
Are the results likely to lead to future research?	100%	0%	0%	0%
Is sufficient detail provided to allow reproduction of the study?	100%	0%	0%	0%
Are the methods and statistics appropriate for the analysis?	100%	0%	0%	0%
Are the principal conclusions supported by the data and analysis?	100%	0%	0%	0%
Does the manuscript discuss limitations?	100%	0%	0%	0%
Have the authors adequately discussed ethical concerns?	100%	0%	0%	0%
Does the manuscript include new data?	100%	0%	0%	0%
Are the data used in the manuscript available?	100%	0%	0%	0%
Is the code used in the manuscript available?	100%	0%	0%	0%
Would you recommend this manuscript to others?	100%	0%	0%	0%
Do you recommend this manuscript for peer review?	100%	0%	0%	0%

1 PREreview

Write a PREreview Request a PREreview

PREreview by Gary S McDowell

Authored by Gary S McDowell

Overall Summary:
This preprint compares actual postdoc salaries across the U.S. (sourced from available data for postdocs on H-1B visas) with cost-of-living in various locations, and with salaries for the wider labor market in those locations, to highlight that postdoc salaries do not adjust for…

Read the PREreview by Gary S McDowell