More Money for UK's Senior Researchers

Top salaries in UK research are rising steeply, judging by advertised remuneration on MrWeb and reported in the forthcoming MRWho supplement. The supplement's 'Director+' jobs page, which selects the most senior positions, consists for the first time entirely of ads offering £80k and above.

At the same time, the mean salary for all ads at Director level and above has risen to £57,700. This is £2,000 higher than a year ago, and the highest yet recorded. The previous highest mean salary was £56,800 in the second half of 2001, and this was something of a freak figure because recruitment of more junior directors dropped almost to zero in the aftermath of September 11th (only 60 Director+ ads were posted in 6 months, vs c.40 a month at present). In the first half of 2001, mean salary was only £53,100.

AD salaries are also up on previous years, at £41,900, but some middle ranking job titles, most notably SRE, are still seeing no increase (early 2001 mean £27,400; current figure £27,500).

This week's MRWho also includes hints and tips for online desk research and for producing a good CV, plus details of the supply side of the jobs equation - the selections made by 3,700 candidates registered for jobs, and recent changes in this.

Full details of salaries by job title / function, with bases and historical comparisons including new figures for the first half of 2004 will appear in a special edition to be published in a few weeks. Tables showing the latest available stats and comparing half-years up to and including late 2003 are in the HRchive ( www.mrweb.com/hrchive ).

Far from there being a summer slowdown, the first two weeks of August have been the busiest ever on the site, with 270 vacancy ads posted to date.

To subscribe to the MRWho supplement, which is free and appears 8-10 times a year as a pdf file, email your name, job title, company name and the country you're based in, together of course with the email address you'd like it sent to, to mrwho@mrweb.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.