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 Iowa.

 

Cost for FOIA Request: $0

Additional notes: None.

 

The University of Iowa cancelled plans to raise salaries, claiming that this has been mandated by the State of Iowa, and they are returning to their previous policy that postdocs can be paid no less than 5% below NIH NRSA. However they have clarified that this will be based on the new NIH NRSA levels, and so this means the lowest salary should be $45,110. As of Dec 1st 2016, 76 out of 242 salaries were below this level. The lowest salary was $40,698, which is high enough to suggest that all salaries reported are the actual annual salaries.