Thread by @valeriealewis

Thread on how academics can use publicly available salary data to benchmark or negotiate their salary. (This won't touch on general salary negotiation, but specifically how to make use of these data to see if you're paid fairly or aid in negotiating a salary). 1/

Background: Many public universities have public salary data by state law. You can look up salaries for any employee. If you systematically use this data, you can get a sense of a fair salary. (even if you are at a private univ, this can be helpful benchmarking. Keep reading.) 2/

How?
First, make a list of departments at *public* universities roughly equivalent to yours. These should be peer institutions/departments (not ones that are significantly higher ranked or significantly lower). I'd suggest aiming for 5-10. Put them in a spreadsheet. 3/

Second, go to those dept websites and identify the faculty at your rank like you (e.g. depending on field/dept, maybe in your subfield or discipline). Populate all of them in your spreadsheet. While you're there, populate the years they have been in rank if you can find it. 4/

Third, google each public university on your list plus salary, e.g. "X State University faculty salary". There's usually a newspaper or non-profit that makes an interactive database you can look up individual employee salaries from an underlying public database. 5/

Next, find salaries for each person in your list and put in spreadsheet. Also note the year for that salary (depends on the state reporting requirements how current it will be) and make sure you note the time period (e.g. if it's 9 month, includes summer, 12 month). 6/

Okay, you've got a spreadsheet that looks a bit like this! (Here's one I made in 2015 for reference, I do this every few years). Google to get any inflation adjustment you need, and put a new column to calculates adjustments of all the salaries to the same year dollars. 7/

There's probably a handful of cases you might drop or flag. Like people you can't find in the database. Or in some cases have very outlying salary (e.g. 2x high as other assistant profs and it turns out they have some big administrative role that probably is driving it) 8/

Where to go from here is harder. Statistically minded people know that with a small N, no analysis will be perfect. Start by seeing the range, the median, and the 25th/75th percentiles, and where you fall compared to these. 9/

You need to gauge where you *realistically* should fall. If you are negotiating a starting salary as a brand new asst prof, you probably shouldn't be top of the full assistant prof range. But if you're in your 4th or 5th year and productive, you should be in the top half. 10/

(PAUSE to note you can do this at any rank, not just assistant prof. You can also do it if you are actively looking for a job and negotiating, but also if you are not looking and just want to make sure you're being fairly compensated.) 11/

My best advice is to carefully decide where you think your percentile should be in the distribution based on your years and your productivity. Use it a benchmark, and articulate key points on why that's the percentile of fair comparison for you (e.g. 90th? 50th? why?) 12/

Key considerations for articulating this to yourself (and others):
- years in rank
- productivity based on your school (e.g. research productivity in papers/grants for R1s, teaching success in teaching focused schools)
- awards and recognitions, leadership roles

13/

If you are already employed and find out you are underpaid, this was a good use of your time! Use the data to ask for a raise.

If you find out your fairly paid, that's also great. You can feel good about your chair and department on that count.

14/

Whether you're negotiating a starting salary or asking for a raise, use the data to help make your case to your chair (or potential chair). Share the data, percentiles, and your assessment of how you fit in the distribution. 15/

Relying on data is helpful for you, but probably also helpful for the person you are asking (e.g. chair). Often dept chairs have limited control and need approval from someone else (e.g. dean's office). You are giving them specific data to advocate on your behalf. 16/

Funny side note: oddly enough compiling these data might be most helpful in private universities. People in public universities are generally aware of public salary data, and people of course check out each other's salaries. Chairs know this, and salary compression results. 17/

Private univs have no similar pressure to create equity or bring up low salaries. You might actually be more likely to be underpaid as a result (ESPECIALLY as a woman or POC) if you're at a private univ-- even if your reference data is public universities of the same caliber. 18/

Note if you're negotiating a salary at one of the public universities departments on your list, the salaries in that department will matter way more than any others, because your school and department will care about equity especially since it's all public. 19/

There's plenty of other info and books on negotiating, so I won't touch on other aspects. But I will say that *especially* if you find other parts of negotiation hard, using data can make it easier (especially for researchers who every day use data to craft arguments.) 20/

I hope this is useful! I'll close by saying I would love to see more salary transparency in academia, even in the private universities. I think it can seriously help departments be more equitable and as a result also foster good department culture and relationships. End/

Footnote: thanks to @AcaDamesPodcast for inspiring this thread when I listened to the "Money" episode (and thought "oh hey I have a process for looking at salaries that might be useful for others") @birkensarah @WhitneyEpi