There is very little information available on how much postdocs are actually paid in the U.S., beyond data on institutional salary policies gathered by the National Postdoctoral Association. Following on from recent discussions about postdoc salaries changing as a result of proposed updates to U.S. Federal labor law, we have gathered data from a selection of institutions through Freedom of Information Requests, asking only for titles and salaries of postdocs, to see if we can identify actual postdoctoral salaries. The aggregate data, and more information, can be found at out “Investigating Postdoc Salaries” Resource. Every day, we will be releasing a discussion of each individual institution or system from which we received data. Today: the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

 

Cost for FOIA Request: $0

Additional notes: None

 

The data from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill appears excellent, with the one caveat that the number of postdocs is about half that expected from the NSF data. We know that postdocs are counted very well at Chapel Hill and so suspect there may be some data missing from the salary request.

 

The salary range reported was from $42,000 (the 2014 NRSA Year 0 stipend to $90,000, but these were both extreme data points. 310 postdocs were on less than $50k (190 at exactly $47,476). 103 had salaries in the $50ks, and 27 were on $60k+.

Breaking this down by titles:
Clinical Fellows: 8; $58885-65249
Post-Doc Research Associate: 325; $42k-90k
Post-Doc Trainee: 107; $47476-65k (more representative of true range)

 

The distribution of salaries is plotted here:

 

 

 

 

Also plotting salaries for those on fellowships vs those who are not, there seems to be generally equal treatment of postdocs regardless of funding source, in terms of salaries:

 

 

The postdoc salary policy at UNC Chapel Hill is to pay postdocs at least $47,476.