Less than two-thirds of US institutions say that their postdoctoral researchers earn at least the US National Institutes of Health-recommended minimum of US$39,264, a survey has found. Health-care benefits are available to postdocs working as employees under a principal investigator's grant at some 95% of responding institutions, but less than two-thirds offer such benefits to those classified as trainees or on fellowships.

The US National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) in Washington DC, which represents about 70,000 postdocs across 190 US and Canadian institutions, this month released preliminary data from its Institutional Policy Survey. Building on a 2011 survey, the association polled 167 private, public and government institutions on postdoc policies concerning pay and benefits, career-development services and career-tracking practices, among others. It received full responses from 74 institutions.

No other agency or organization has produced similar information on postdocs. The NPA estimates that there are up to 91,000 postdocs in the United States, including those who are not NPA members.

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The survey results showed that career-development services for postdocs vary widely. Most institutions (96%) offer training in writing grant applications, for example, but only just over three-quarters run programmes on presentation skills, and smaller proportions provide interview training, networking events or career-counselling appointments. Institutions with fewer than 750 postdocs offer especially scanty services. Some 57% of institutions say they have no postdoc handbook, and about one-fifth set no limit on how long a researcher can be classified as a postdoc. Just six institutions reported that they have a system to track postdocs' career arcs after they have left the institution.

Belinda Huang, executive director of the NPA, says that the association is preparing a report on the findings, for distribution to policy-makers, funders and university and institution administrations. It will call for extra training for careers outside academia, as well as more tracking of postdocs after they leave. “Now we have hard data,” she says.