The Long Road to Riches in the Life Sciences

The highest paying jobs in life sciences involve clinical research, bioinformatics, or bioengineering, according to an earnings survey by The Scientist and Abbott, Langer & Associates Inc. The median salaries plus cash compensation for jobs in these disciplines, from $75,000 to $77,000, are 36-40 percent higher than the $55,000 median pay for the 7,902 life scientists who provided usable responses. Salaries for doctorate bioinformaticians who also hold medical degrees prove to be even higher; the median for those researchers--the majority of whom work in pharmaceutical company labs--is $95,000. The salaries in these specialized fields suggest that life science researchers can boost their pay by acquiring clinical, engineering, and computer skills. These earning trends also reflect a theme supported by other survey data: Supply and demand rule the labor market. The need for bioinformaticians, bioengineers, and clinical researchers outpaces the supply. "There's been some concern in the country for the last 25 years about the diminishing number of clinical researchers, so the going rate has gone up," says Elvin Smith, associate vice president for Health Sciences, Texas A&M University. "Bioinformatics is a relatively new field; there is a gap between the demand for talent and the available talent." Translating Pays The employment market puts a value on work that transfers data from the lab to the human, explains Eleanor Babco, executive director of the Washington D.C.-based Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology. "If you can take what has been discovered and translate that into helping human beings, I think that would be a tremendous asset," she says. The salary survey statistics on clinical research, bioengineering, and bioinformatics are reflected in the Abbott, Langer & Associates report "Compensation of Life Scientists." For the survey, The Scientist E-mailed invitations to 23,933 subscribers of the print edition of The Scientist, and to 29,172 life scientist registrants on The Scientist Web site, asking for information about demographics, employment, education, work activities, and salary levels. These responses support some commonly recognized trends and reveal some new findings. Physical scientists and engineers earn more than life scientists. Researchers in industry earn higher salaries and cash compensation than their academic colleagues, but the earnings gap may not be as much as expected. In both professions, MD researchers garner the best earnings. PhD scientists working for industry, nonprofit organizations, government, and industry show a median income of $64,000, compared with MD scientists whose median salary comes to $100,000. One reason an MD would be important, says Dan Parker, associate provost at Texas A&M, is the opportunity for National Institutes of Health funding. "It's much tougher for someone with a PhD who is not connected with a medical school to be funded by NIH." Industry salaries dwarf academic salaries as a whole, but the median compensation for professors and department heads approaches that of manufacturing presidents and chief operating officers, particularly if these academicians work in nonprofit or governmental institutions. University department heads earn a median salary of $100,000, compared with the $125,000 median for company presidents. Professors report a $96,849 median. The median salary and cash compensation for professors in nonprofit organizations runs $105,000, about 16.7 percent more than the $90,000 median for professors in government organizations. Judith Muñoz, vice president for Human Resources for the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., attributes the higher nonprofit salaries to recruitment of influential researchers. "We are an elite organization," she comments. "What we consider a capable postdoc would be different than what another organization would look at." Nevertheless, for these professors, academia can be very lucrative. One-fourth of the 638 professors who responded (159 professors) earn salaries and cash compensation of more than $120,000. The top fourth of the 41 professors with medical degrees earn more than $195,008. The compensation for these government professors is more than competitive with salaries in the private sector. Their responsibilities and experience coincide with industry vice presidents, distinguished researchers or research directors in the private sector, whose median salaries run $116,500, $113,500, and $96,000. Professors also receive the more intangible benefits of an open working environment, and at colleges and universities, long vacations. Myth and Reality Yet, the easy life of an academic may be more myth than reality, Smith says. Today's academics must raise research funds, manage labs, publish and instruct, or supervise the instruction of students. Tenure is under fire, and at government institutions, lawmakers question the value of every dollar spent. "Over the last several years there has been an increased scrutiny of tenured faculty, particularly in state institutions by legislators," Smith says. The road to top pay in academia can also be lengthy. The median salary and compensation for department heads rises from $51,000 for those who have worked five to nine years since they received their highest degrees to $105,000 for those who have worked for 20 to 24 years. In 10 years the salary climbs another $26,000. Academic life science researchers--particularly senior researchers--earn lower salaries than do their colleagues in other fields. Senior scientists in academia earn median salaries of $42,000. Their peers in research and development--an industry category that includes physical scientists and engineers--report median salaries of $70,000. In industry, some life scientists can actually out-earn their peers. The median for those senior researchers totals $77,000. The disparity between academic life scientists and their peers in other disciplines reflects the large quantity and related low salaries of some of the junior researchers, Babco observes. "In the geosciences you don't have the postdocs," she says. Parker from Texas A&M adds that the market for researchers in other disciplines is less competitive than that for the life scientists. "Universities have a heck of a lot easier time recruiting a brand-new PhD in biology ... than in electrical engineering," he says. "It's a difference in supply and demand.... We will hire a brand new biochemistry professor for $50,000, [we'll hire] a computer engineering professor at $80,000 to $90,000." Paula Park can be contacted at ppark@the-scientist.com. Scientists Weigh Chic Lifestyles Against Largesse A higher salary doesn't always mean more money in the pocket. Or so suggest the results of a geographic analysis of salaries and cash benefits from the survey "Compensation of Life Scientists" conducted by The Scientist and Abbott, Langer & Associates Inc. of Crete, Ill. Researchers in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology-rich regions of western New Jersey, and in Middlesex and Essex counties in Massachusetts, report median salaries for life scientists of $81,000 and $78,000, respectively, the highest in the nation. Those figures compare to median earnings of only $40,000 for scientists in Charlottesville, Va., and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and the mere $38,000 median for survey participants in Shreveport, La. But life science compensation differences--often influenced by the size of the life scientist population and the availability of jobs in the private sector--show only part of the picture (see Life Sciences Earnings by Region). The $81,000 earned by life scientists in New Jersey may not stretch as far in that relatively costly region, as does the $40,000 earned in Charlottesville. In some of the most expensive regions of the country, such as San Francisco and its suburbs, costs of housing, food, and other necessities negate the slightly higher-than-average salaries life scientists earn. The cost of living in the Bay Area rises 80 percentage points above the national average, and the median compensation in life sciences is only 33 points above the median for all survey participants. So it's no wonder recruiters in the region are quick to focus on the nonfiduciary benefits of their chic address. Ginny Tolan, vice president of human resources at the San Francisco biotech company SurroMed, says the lure of the Bay Area gives companies an upper hand, of sorts, when determining salaries. "While workers want competitive wages, companies aren't looking to overspend and have a large choice of talent," she says. "Whether [people] have grown up in the area or went to school here, ... they won't be quite as demanding salarywise because they've fallen in love with the area and their ultimate wish is to remain here." Adoration can be expensive. Housing prices in the region send living costs soaring, says Carol Hartman, a partner at Schoepp-Hartman, an executive search firm in Walnut Creek, Calif. "As far as the cost of everything else here goes, it's more or less on the level with the rest of the country, but because San Francisco is considered an 'in place' to be and yet is a relatively small 'city,' the demand for housing is extremely high." In western New Jersey, which holds a bevy of biotechs such as Schering-Plough and Novartis, the median salary for life scientists surveyed is a full 42 percentage points higher than the median for all life scientists. The region, north of Trenton and west of Newark, also is more costly to live in than are some other areas, but it is not as pricey as San Francisco, where the median salary is lower. That differential makes Garden State living very fruitful for scientists, according to Patrick Morgan of Runzheimer International, an economic research company based in Rochester, Wis., that performs cost-of-living analyses. Similarly, Middlesex and Essex counties, which make up a large portion of the Boston suburbs, illustrate that a person can have cash and spend it too. While the cost of living is about 22 percentage points above the national average, the $78,000 median salary and cash compensation is a full 37 points above the median for all life scientists. The cost of living index for each urban community is according to ACCRA (not an acronym), a nonprofit organization that provides economic research on cities across the country. Their index is determined through the comparative pricing of the same 59 items of six categories: groceries, housing, utilities, transportation, health care, and miscellaneous goods and services from American urban areas where they are weighted to reflect the typical distribution of spending in the average household. --Hal Cohen The Highs and Lows of Researchers' Pay Masumi Eto came to the United States from Hokkaido, Japan, to take advantage of better opportunities in postdoctoral cell biology work. Three years later, Eto expresses satisfaction with his work at the University of Virginia Center for Cell Signaling in Charlottesville. Not only does he receive what he describes as a great education to benefit his anticipated move to industry, he also earns $38,000 a year, 19 percent more than the $32,000 median salary and cash benefits of all U.S. postdoctoral workers surveyed by Abbott, Langer & Associates Inc., a consulting firm in employee compensation, for The Scientist. Eto's cushy conditions hardly mirror those of his fellow postdocs, however. In the department of microbiology and molecular genetics at Harvard University in Boston, one disgruntled student, who asked to remain anonymous, suggested the term postdoctorate be changed to the phrase "indentured servant." "The [National Institutes of Health] funding guidelines state that a postdoctorate with no experience should get $28,000 yearly," he says. And that's just what he earns. But Boston isn't Charlottesville. For the Harvard student, compensation on the low side of the $32,000 median postdoc salary line, along with high housing costs, daycare fees for his child, and hefty competition from his colleagues add up to a stiff price to pay for the name recognition the Ivy League school offers. Both the Harvard and the Virginia postdocs possess similar experience and study at highly regarded research institutions. But the difference in their salaries illustrates a divide between the haves and the have-nots in academia revealed by the results of a compensation survey by The Scientist and Abbott, Langer & Associates. The survey showed that postdocs find themselves on the mezzanine level of the pay scale (see Life Scientists: The Haves and Have Nots). Only laboratory technicians--with bachelors' or even associates' degrees--get paid less. Their median salary equals $28,341. This compares with the $96,849 median salary of university professors. Still, the Harvard student does not protest too much. "I'm currently living several blocks off of Easy Street, but the academic environment and name recognition here is almost unrivaled," he says. Judith Muñoz, vice president for human resources at the Scripps Institute in La Jolla, Calif., says that some postdoctoral students earn low salaries because they are still learning, and because of federal budget constraints. "The NIH, where we get our funding, controls the maximum that you can pay them with NIH funds," she says. The NIH does not control the minimum salaries. Despite the low postdoc pay, these workers can at least expect to share their fiscal fate with many of their colleagues. Eighty percent of the junior researchers and postdocs who participated in The Scientist survey reported salaries of below $43,000, and above $26,000, a difference of 50 percentage points. As researchers rise through ranks, not only do their salaries balloon, but the disparity between high- and low-end earnings also swells, according to the survey. The top-earning 10 percent of professors garner salaries of $145,000 or more while the lowest 10 percent of earners collect $61,650 or less. (The majority of survey respondents work in academia.) Salary disparities reflect inequities in the supply of skilled recruits. Dan Parker, assistant provost at Texas A&M University in Houston, says, "It's market forces ... and it's more market forces on the lower end.... This country still produces a plethora of PhDs in chemistry, biology, biochemistry." Senior salaries soar in comparison with those of postdocs in part because universities aggressively seek out scientists who have proved their merit while on someone else's payroll. "The problem we have is not particularly one of hiring but one of retention," he adds. "As a biochemist comes in and makes his reputation, ... other universities are staring down their scope and picking off the bright young scientists." But the competition to attract experienced scientists doesn't drive salaries so high that young researchers dream of moneybags in their future. Many have more prosaic dreams: adding their tiny contribution to science. Mark Hiese performed his postdoc in biopathogenesis and vaccine development at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Hiese, now an assistant professor, extols the non-monetary rewards of research: "For me, it was never about the money...how many people wake up and are excited to go into work today?" --Hal Cohen Supplemental Materials Click to view the PDF files: Top 10 Salaries for Life Scientists Life Sciences Earnings by Region Life Scientists: The Haves and Have Nots The 850-page report, "Compensation of Life Scientists" is available for $295.00 (plus shipping & handling of $13.57, which is waived if order is accompanied by a check). Orders should be mailed to Abbott, Langer & Associates, Inc., Dept. SCI, 548 First St., Crete, IL 60417, faxed to (708) 672-4674, or phoned to (708) 672-4200. Be sure to direct your request to Dept. SCI.

The Long Road to Riches in the Life Sciences

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