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: University of Cincinnati.

 

Cost for FOIA Request: $0

Additional notes: Names and departments also listed for each salary.

 

As far as we know, University of Cincinnati is the only institution that continued to track postdoc’s hours after December 1st, and may still be doing so.

 

Salaries were received for about half of the expected number of postdocs. Twenty percent of salaries were below the minimum of $23,660, suggesting that the numbers reported were total compensation. Indeed, if hours are being tracked, there may not be an annual salary set, but instead an hourly wage. This tends to put the average salary at the lower end of the range seen for institutions surveyed.