Scientific advancements—from new technologies to breakthrough treatments to innovative methods—come from people who spent years to decades honing their research skills. This scientific workforce relies upon a pipeline of young scientists-to-be continuing their scientific training in graduate and postdoctoral research.
Many graduate and postdoctoral researchers receive monetary compensation in their respective programs, frequently funded by federal agencies in an effort to promote the US’s scientific enterprise. Yet these benefits may not compare to those offered by professions outside of academia, which could influence decisions about continuing one’s research training.
The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) conducted a review of the financial support provided to STEM graduate and postdoctoral researchers. Their report, which included compensation data and survey responses from these trainees, highlighted how researchers at these education levels make noticeably less than their equivalently educated peers working outside of academia.
They noted, though, that this data is incomplete, and made recommendations to specific federal agencies to improve these findings. Overall, the GAO found that compensation as well as other career and lifestyle factors influence young scientists’ decisions to pursue or remain in research programs.
“The GAO report shines a bright light on a blind spot—the lack of data on postdoc compensation. We know from years of sampling the postdoc community that compensation and benefits are paramount among their concerns. We urge [the National Science Foundation] to follow through on its promises, and directives, to further explore this area with more robust data,” said Thomas Kimbis, the executive director and chief executive officer of the National Postdoctoral Association, in an emailed comment.
Financial Support Influences Research Experiences
A former postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) said that when they first decided to pursue a PhD, their salary was comparable to what they previously made in the food and beverage industry, but it stayed the same over the six years in their program. “I thought about cost of living all the time,” they said. They added that the financial strain forces graduate and postdoctoral researchers to push off typical lifestyle milestones, such as getting married, starting a family, or buying a home.
Reflecting on the financial challenges that came with their compensation, the former researcher said, “It's not great. It's definitely hurting what little scientific pipeline we have left. I think it enriches for people with means [to pursue these programs]. It hurts the scientific enterprise overall.”
To get a better picture of compensation in federal research programs and the impact of this on individuals’ decisions to start or continue research, the GAO conducted an analysis of financial assistance offered to graduate and postdoctoral researchers. Between 2017 and 2023, the GAO found that federal agencies funded 26 to 28 percent of graduate research and 50 percent of postdoctoral researchers, with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) providing the most support.
This support came in both direct funding (for example, fellowships, trainees’ grants, and scholarships) and indirect funding (defined as university grants or contracts and principal investigator (PI) grants). The agencies set compensation levels for direct funding awards; although they cannot dictate this financial aid for indirect mechanisms, the benchmarks they set for other compensation sources often influence indirect funding levels.
Using the 2023 Survey of Doctorate Recipients report, the GAO found that directly funded postdoctoral scholars earned a median salary of $60,000. The report authors said that centralized compensation data for directly funded graduate researchers wasn’t available. They also noted that indirect funding information for graduate and postdoctoral researchers was not available. The authors identified the compensation for these scientists at 48 (graduate researcher) and 45 (postdoctoral researcher) research universities, leading to estimates of $36,000 and $62,200 in median income for each group, respectively.
“I don't think we compensate our postdocs enough,” said Brian Dias, a neuroscientist and geneticist at the University of Southern California. He said that although the NIH benchmark for graduate and postdoctoral researchers’ salaries has increased recently, and higher cost-of-living areas like southern California often have compensation packages above these baselines, these salaries still aren’t comparable to what young people can find in industries.
Indeed, the GAO report compared these values to working professionals with similar levels of education using the US Bureau of Labor Statistics 2024 Current Population Survey. Although they could not exclude graduate or postdoctoral researchers from this analysis, they found that people with bachelor’s degrees earned $82,200 in median income, while individuals with doctoral degrees earned a median income of $118,500. This suggested that people working in industries outside of academia made more than their equivalently educated peers working in academic research settings.
Graduate and postdoctoral researchers in academia (red) make almost or less than half of the median annual income of their peers with comparable education overall (black). Here, directly funded and indirectly funded researchers’ salaries have been averaged. The “all professions” group values come from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics 2024 Current Population Survey which includes occupations across all sectors. The GAO was not able to exclude graduate and postdoctoral researchers from this group, so this reflects positions within and outside of academia.
Adapted from the US GAO Report, Additional Data Needed on Graduate Researcher and Postdoctoral Scholar Compensation; Modified by Erin Lemieux
Compensation can be a large factor in a person’s decision, or ability, to pursue or remain in a research program. However, this is largely influenced by the cost of living in the area that one lives. In a survey of 72 graduate and postdoctoral researchers, the report authors saw that when salary packages improved individuals’ financial stability, they rated their compensation positively. When cost of living was a concern, though, people reported being more dissatisfied with their compensation and rated it as a negative influence on their decision to stay in a federally funded research program.
The former postdoctoral scholar agreed with this assessment. They said that although the salary was above that of the NIH benchmark, they still struggled with financial stability. They recalled needing assistance from their parents to cover their living expenses, “which really beat me up because I felt like I was a failure [because] here I had gotten my PhD and worked so hard and went to school and did everything they told us to and then couldn't even afford a basic apartment.”
This caused them stress and guilt that directly affected their productivity in their postdoctoral position. During their time at UCI, the postdoctoral researchers went on strike and ultimately negotiated a higher salary, however the former researcher said that this caused rifts between the trainees and faculty. Not wanting to contribute to this type of stress as a PI, these experiences led to the researcher deciding to leave academia. Compensation can also have direct consequences on the ability for PIs to recruit these young researchers to work in their labs when they are competing against industries with higher pay.
Dias is also the director of the office of postdoctoral affairs at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. In this role, he has talked directly to postdoctoral researchers about their motivating factors and needs. He said that individual career and lifestyle goals influenced their choices of whether or not to pursue a postdoctoral program, but that people who choose to remain in academia know that the salaries are lower than they are in many industries. Dias said that within academic settings, most choices about where to go for a postdoctoral research position reflected people’s research interests instead of compensation. This was consistent with findings from a survey that the GAO conducted as well, in which career aspirations, facility resources, and funding stability ranked as stronger influences on whether to start or continue a research program.
Many factors beyond compensation also influence young researchers’ decisions to start or continue a federally funded research program in academia.
Adapted from US GAO Report, Additional Data Needed on Graduate Researcher and Postdoctoral Scholar Compensation; Modified by Erin Lemieux
From his own conversations with postdoctoral researchers, Dias added that their financial concerns are more often related to tangential factors, like having childcare available or for universities to offer relocation expenses and sign-on bonuses to help offset financial burdens associated with moving to these positions. Federal grants cannot support these expenses, and so would have to be accommodated by other monetary means.
The former postdoctoral researcher said that they heard these concerns from their peers as well. But they added that, even then, compensation remains the core factor. “Everything else stems from that. Where you live is based on your compensation. Your quality of life is based on your compensation. Your ability to take a decent vacation and de-stress and take care of yourself is based on your compensation,” they said.
Funding Adjustments and Future Trade-Offs
The GAO report recommended that federal agencies, specifically the NSF which administers two surveys to track US graduate and postdoctoral funding and career outcomes, should collect more data on indirectly funded researchers. This, an author of the GAO report said in an emailed statement, would allow for a better evaluation of the current status of compensation to be able to make more informed decisions on this topic. An NSF spokesperson said that the NSF will send a plan to Congress and the GAO that outlines actions taken or to be taken to in response to GAO’s recommendations within 180 days of the report’s publication.
Yet, even with the current data, many individuals feel that it is obvious that compensation needs to increase. "I think postdocs understand entering academia that those postdoc positions often pay below those of peers in for-profit industries. But pay levels [that are] only half of what PhD's earn in non-postdoc positions is unsustainable and requires rethinking of our national research investment priorities and better public-private solutions,” said Kimbis.
Dias said that he would like to pay these researchers more, commenting on how he wanted to make more on his salary as a postdoctoral researcher, and expenses have only gotten higher since that time. “We've got to appreciate the fact that if we want to attract these individuals when there are competing pulls out there—be that AI companies biotech industry etcetera—and we think postdocs are the engine of discovery and they're integral parts to our labs. They should be paid a lot more than what they're currently being paid,” he said.
A previous NIH working group came to the same conclusion in a 2023 report, indicating that postdoctoral researcher salaries should increase to a baseline of $70,000 per year. Increasing the salaries for early career researchers will lead to more money from grants going toward salaries, which the report acknowledged could lead to there being fewer positions available if NIH funding remains the same.
This, Dias said, introduces another ongoing discussion about the longstanding annual payout on modular NIH grants. That figure, at $250,000 per year, has remained static as research expenses have increased. Dias said that the NIH should consider increasing this amount.
In the meantime, increasing postdoctoral and graduate researcher salaries would come out of currently available grant funding. Some researchers have concerns about this, since that would leave fewer funds available for other research expenses. Dias admitted that it may mean that many groups, including his own, have to stay on the smaller side. “I would be okay with having a smaller lab if I were paying these individuals, who have so much experience [and] bring so much value to my lab, [more]. That is a trade-off that I'd be happy to make every single time,” he said.
Addressing these concerns may also be imperative to maintaining the scientific workforce and its many economic and public benefits, the former UCI researcher said. “I think we're going to end up with [fewer] grad students and less postdocs because, to pay people what they need to make, you essentially need to double their salaries,” they said.
Yet, given many of the current challenges that the research community has seen in funding and other policies, they added, “We have this compounding issue where it's hard to find money right now and then it's hard to make sure that people are justly…the net result is going to be fewer postdocs, fewer grad students, less science being done here, lower quality of work, and I think people are going to start going elsewhere.”
Kimbis agreed. "With current policy instability around federal funding for research, the first reassurance postdocs deserve is steady and competitive compensation to ensure they can pay rent and take care of their own health and that of their families."
