Nature has an article, Pay for US postdocs varies wildly by institution. True, but as Matt Hahn, professor of biology at Indian University in Bloomington (cost of living 93% of the USA average) observed there isn’t any correction for cost of living. The researcher who dug through the data actually posted it online, so I decided to correct that oversight.
I took the institutions with N > 20, and looked up the cost of living in Best Places. The plot above is messy, but you can see that lots of institutions are paying a standard median salary of around $47,500, no matter the cost of living.
The correlation between cost of living and postdoc salary is 0.39. The weighted correlation is 0.48. These are pretty modest. That means you can find a really good situation, or a really bad one (also, institution reputation matters, there are some gems which pay well and have great reputations from what I can tell!).
Also, I’m pretty sure that the situation is worse than the numbers above suggest. Looking at the list of universities it seems there’s a bias for institutions at high cost of living locations not to want to report their salary data I think. Aside from UCSB the whole UC system denied the attempt to get data, and I don’t see Stanford, Columbia, or Harvard on the list.
The full table is below the fold, but adjusted for cost of living UCSB postdocs get $20,866 per year. In contrast, Michigan State, University of Maryland, Baltimore, and Wayne State University postdocs make more than $60,000 per year when you adjust. Stanford isn’t on the list, but online it says Stanford postdocs make between the low $50,000 to low $60,000 range, which seems reasonable for life sciences, though definitely poverty wages where the university is located (though if you are in a lucrative field it can be more, and depending on your supervisor outside consulting is a possibility, though good luck living in Silicon Valley on a $100,000 yearly gross income if you have a family, as many postdocs do).
| School | N | Median salary | Cost of Living | Adjusted |
| University of California Santa Barbara | 283 | $53,000 | 254 | $20,866 |
| University of Washington Seattle | 1070 | $50,772 | 177 | $28,685 |
| Boston University | 297 | $49,200 | 170 | $28,941 |
| University of Colorado Boulder | 22 | $52,000 | 178 | $29,213 |
| University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | 65 | $27,515 | 89 | $30,916 |
| State University of New York Stony Brook | 31 | $47,000 | 139 | $33,813 |
| University of North Carolina Chapel Hill | 432 | $47,484 | 131 | $36,247 |
| University of Colorado Denver | 314 | $47,476 | 128 | $37,091 |
| Rutgers University | 539 | $46,000 | 123 | $37,398 |
| University of Michigan Ann Arbor | 1159 | $47,054 | 122 | $38,569 |
| State University of New York Albany | 20 | $39,945 | 101 | $39,550 |
| Purdue University | 407 | $38,896 | 96 | $40,517 |
| University of Texas Austin | 464 | $48,000 | 117 | $41,026 |
| University of Minnesota Twin Cities | 697 | $44,804 | 109 | $41,105 |
| University of Massachusetts Medical School | 360 | $44,556 | 107 | $41,641 |
| University of Virginia | 302 | $47,500 | 113 | $42,035 |
| University of Utah | 387 | $47,484 | 108 | $43,967 |
| University of Texas San Antonio | 53 | $42,000 | 93 | $45,161 |
| University of Maryland College Park | 448 | $56,000 | 122 | $45,902 |
| University of Texas Arlington | 49 | $45,000 | 97 | $46,392 |
| University of Texas Health Sciences Center at Houston | 229 | $47,476 | 102 | $46,545 |
| North Carolina State University | 431 | $47,476 | 102 | $46,545 |
| University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center | 150 | $47,844 | 102 | $46,906 |
| University of Iowa | 241 | $47,476 | 101 | $47,006 |
| Texas A&M | 185 | $46,350 | 97 | $47,784 |
| University of Cincinnati | 134 | $41,157 | 86 | $47,857 |
| Iowa State University | 43 | $47,476 | 99 | $47,956 |
| University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston | 137 | $47,484 | 98 | $48,453 |
| University of Texas Southwestern | 527 | $47,268 | 95 | $49,756 |
| Florida State University | 140 | $47,659 | 95 | $50,167 |
| University of Arizona | 275 | $47,659 | 95 | $50,167 |
| University of Texas El Paso | 43 | $42,191 | 84 | $50,227 |
| University of Texas Dallas | 53 | $48,000 | 95 | $50,526 |
| University of South Florida | 121 | $47,659 | 94 | $50,701 |
| University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio | 52 | $47,476 | 93 | $51,049 |
| University of Indiana Bloomington | 154 | $47,476 | 93 | $51,049 |
| University of Florida | 606 | $47,476 | 92 | $51,604 |
| University of Maryland Baltimore | 267 | $47,244 | 90 | $52,493 |
| University of Indiana Indianapolis | 200 | $47,476 | 90 | $52,751 |
| The Ohio State University | 617 | $47,484 | 84 | $56,529 |
| Michigan State University | 469 | $47,476 | 78 | $60,867 |
| University of Maryland Baltimore County | 24 | $55,688 | 90 | $61,876 |
| Wayne State University | 110 | $45,000 | 72 | $62,500 |