Current State

Beware employers that regularly tout themselves as best-in-class, and don’t provide the data to back it up.

Say you’ve got an employer who claims they hire the best. But they only target to pay 60% of the national average. Also, targeting and achieving are two different beasts. If they target 60%, they might require data supporting that they’re paying at least 10% less than that, for 3 sequential years, and having supervisors bring it to HR as an issue (which is only going to happen if employees speak up and bring it to their supervisors as an issue). Only then will HR bump that value back up to 60% through an adjustment. But that doesn’t make up the amounts lost for those preceding years, and the cycle starts all over again right away, with “annual adjustments” that are raises of less than inflation, or no raises at all.

Here’s a recent example. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) released postdoctoral salary levels in April 2024, recommending a minimum starting salary of $61,008. It was only after that was released that some large employers with many postdoctoral employees raised their salary level to meet this recommended minimum in late May.

Would you call that competitive?

Steps in the right direction

Starting in 2025, Minnesota joins 11 other states in requiring compensation and benefits information to be made available in job postings [1, 2]. Transparency is a step in the right direction, especially for women. With the wage gap currently at 17% in the United States, if pay transparency can actually reduce that gap by 7%, then maybe we can get down to “only” a 10% gap.

Assess your own situation

Do you know what your time, knowledge, and skills are worth in dollars at your workplace? Are you being compensated properly? If not, what are the steps you need to take to change that?