Salary/Stipend Level

The appointment may be on Harvard payroll (“paid”) or funded independently (“unpaid”).

According to section C2, “Salary,” of the FAS Appointments Handbook,
 

Paid appointments may be as employee postdoctoral fellows (when the postdoctoral fellow is supported by research grants and contracts under the direction of a Harvard Principal Investigator) or as stipendiary postdoctoral fellows (when a fellowship is awarded to a postdoctoral fellow and is managed by Harvard University, with the fellow paid through Harvard). For further guidance on stipendees, please see the “Research Appointments Matrix,” available on the Appointment and Promotion page of the FAS website for faculty and researchers. Effective August 1, 2024, the minimum salary for postdocs is $67,600. Please note that salaries have not increased since August 1, 2024, as they are still under negotiation.

The salary minimum continues to apply to both internal and externally funded postdoctoral fellows who are paid through Harvard. An external postdoctoral fellow is a postdoc who receives funding from a source outside of Harvard. If the funding flows through Harvard, it must meet the $67,600 minimum. However, if the funding goes directly to the postdoc, please refer to the section below describing positions not paid through Harvard.

Positions unpaid through Harvard include those on fellowships that are paid directly to the fellow. If the postdoctoral appointment is unpaid through Harvard, the candidate must have external funding that meets the minimum base salary requirement of $61,008 (for postdocs with no prior experience) or the appropriate step on the NIH scale. Personal funds may not be used (in full or in part) to meet this requirement.
 

-----> Any postdoc who believes that they are paid less than the FAS salary minimum should contact Stephen Kargère, Director of the FAS Office of Postdoctoral Affairs. If you have any questions, you may also reach out to your Assistant Dean for Faculty Affairs or Zoe Fonseca-Kelly, Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs.

Important note:

Q: Why is my salary in Peoplesoft slightly lower than the one listed in my offer letter?

A: For technical reasons, your annual salary is listed in the system as total payout, not salary. That’s because when salary is divided into 14-day biweekly periods, one ends up with 26 biweekly periods plus one day. So total biweekly pay leaves out that extra day, whereas total payout (which is the effective amount you get) is the 26 biweekly pays plus the one day at the daily rate.