Negotiating using the ASA academic salary survey
The Amstat News recently published the ASA annual academic salary survey for 2017-2018.
If you are looking to start a new job, apply for a promotion, or manage a team of biostatisticians, this is a great resource. Here are some things to consider.
What your hospital or medical school may be using to set salaries
Many Medical Schools rely on salary data collected by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) to determine faculty salaries. Those data are not free, and thus not readily accessible by individuals. However, you might be able to request them through department administrators. The AAMC salary ranges for Biostatistics faculty are based on sample sizes of about 150-200 (depending on rank), and are generally very similar to the ASA’s salary figures. However, AAMC data are only available for each academic rank as a whole, not subdivided by the number of years in that rank.
Salaries also have considerable geographical variation and neither the AAMC nor the ASA data are available with that level of granularity. Therefore, institutions will use national data only as a general guide and may try to obtain salaries for comparable job titles from regional or local competitors. They will then use that information when setting their own salary ranges.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics of the US Department of Labor reports on Occupational Employment Statistics. There is a page for salaries of statisticians, but these results are not coarse enough or specific enough to distinguish rank, tenure, or highest degree. However, regional data are available, if you want to get an idea of geographic variations related to cost of living.
What your hospital or medical school should be using to set biostatistician salaries
There are 10 tables reported in the ASA survey. Since many TSHS members are either in biostatistics groups or in non-statistics/non-biostatistics departments, the most relevant tables are the following:
Table 2 - salaries for academic faculty in biostatistics departments, using a 12-month salary. This table will be most relevant if you are a full-time faculty member.
Table 9 - salaries for academic faculty in biostatistics departments, using a 12-month salary, with separate figures for tenure and non-tenure tracks. This table can be useful if your department differentiates between two tracks (many departments don’t differentiate with respect to the level of salary—only with respect to job responsibilities, grant support requirements, and promotion criteria).
Table 7 - salaries for academic non-faculty and/or Master’s-level staff, using a 12-month salary (based primarily on data from biostatistics departments). These figures are useful to determine staff/non-faculty salaries.
Some considerations when using the ASA tables
First, for someone who remains in the same rank for more than 4-5 years, his/her salary typically falls behind the salary of newly-hired faculty in the same rank. For example, in Table 2, Assistant and Associate Professor salaries are actually lower at longer stays in that rank. This happens because annual salary increases within the institution are typically lower (1-3%) than salary increases in the job market. To address this issue and improve faculty retention, some groups (including our own) are able to periodically negotiate equity adjustments. It takes some political capital to do that and good alliances within the institution, but referencing the ASA salary data is a big help.
For isolated statisticians, when negotiating about salary, it is imperative that they get the buy-in of the Chair of the department they are based in. The Chair will then need to convince the administration and HR to use appropriate salary figures for the biostatistician. The ASA salary information is a very useful tool at both stages. Be particularly careful not to be lumped into a salary scale drawn for some other group that may have a much lower salary ranges. This is often the case when the isolated biostatistician resides in a basic science or tech department.
Appropriate pay scales is something that a new hire should raise right up front, when discussing salary, benefits, promotion criteria, etc. But that negotiation is another ball of wax for another day.
This post was written by Constantine Daskalakis, ScD, Thomas Jefferson University with contributions from Felicity Enders, PhD, Mayo Clinic, and Laila Poission, PhD, Henry Ford Health System.
Full web addresses:
ASA academic salary survey 2017-2018: http://magazine.amstat.org/blog/2018/05/01/1718academicsalarysurvey
US Department of Labor report: https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes152041.htm