Scientists around the world report that stagnant pay, inflation and uneven access to raises are eroding their financial security, according to Nature’s 2026 Science Job Satisfaction Survey. Fewer than half of respondents received a pay increase in the previous 12 months, about one-third said their salary covered only basic expenses, and one in 10 said it did not cover those expenses at all. The findings highlight large differences between countries, sectors and career stages, while also showing that nominal salaries do not always reflect local purchasing power.
Umar, a mathematics lecturer in northern Nigeria, has worked at universities for more than 10 years. During that time, he received only one raise, in 2024, when the government increased the national minimum wage. Without adjustments for inflation or promotion, his income no longer covers basic living expenses. He borrows money, takes on additional work and cuts back on essentials. “Unfortunately, my experience is not unique to Nigerian scientists,” he says.
Ashley, a young physicist on a fixed-term contract at a university in the eastern United States, says she is much poorer than her parents, neither of whom has a degree. “It’s really terrible that I have a job that requires a PhD in science and I’m making $20,000 less a year than my dad made in that job 20 years ago, not counting inflation,” she says.
Ashley says she cannot afford children because her salary would not cover childcare or college costs, and she cannot afford to buy a home. She believes she did everything “right”, including working during her undergraduate studies to avoid debt. “Yet I’m still locked out of the middle-class life I’ve worked so hard to live,” she says. “It sucks. It really, really sucks.”
Umar and Ashley, whose names have been changed, live in countries with very different research resources and living costs. Their experiences nevertheless reflect broader global patterns. When Nature’s careers team surveyed them and about 4,000 other scientists about pay earlier this year, fewer than half said they had received a pay increase in the previous 12 months. About one-third said their salary covered only basic expenses, while one in 10 said their income did not cover even those.
The survey asked respondents to convert their gross, pre-tax salary into US dollars and select an income range. More than half earned less than $50,000 a year, while 22% earned $80,000 or more. In 2021, 38% of respondents reported incomes below $50,000 and 32% reported incomes of $80,000 or more. The apparent decline in global salaries might partly reflect changes in the survey’s geographic composition: respondents from Asia made up 39% of this year’s sample, compared with 10% in 2021. Among continents with enough respondents for comparison, scientists in North America earned the most, followed by those in Europe and Asia.
Salaries in industry were 66% higher than those in academia. Accordingly, 58% of scientists in industry said they were satisfied with their pay, compared with 43% of those in academia. Even in the private sector, however, some scientists believe they are underpaid.
“Every year, I feel like I’m making less money,” says a researcher at a biomedical technology company in a large Midwestern US city who asked Nature not to disclose her identity. After becoming pregnant, she decided that she could no longer support her child on her university salary and moved to her current job four years ago. Despite having more than 12 years of experience in both industry and academia, she says her pay remains comparable to that of a new graduate.
“I love science and my job, but I also feel undervalued,” she says.
Purchasing power
Among the 10 countries with more than 100 respondents, US-based scientists reported the highest salaries, making comparisons between those countries more reliable. About 65% of scientists in the United States said they earned more than $80,000 annually. The lowest reported wages were in India, where 53% earned less than $15,000 a year. Across continents, Africa had the lowest salaries, with 61% of respondents earning less than $15,000.
Self-reported salaries converted into US dollars do not show what people can buy locally. A dollar buys almost five times as much in India as it does in the United States. According to purchasing-power calculations by the International Monetary Fund, a $15,000 salary in India is equivalent to a $70,000 salary in the United States. After adjusting for purchasing power, average salaries in Canada exceed those in the United States, salaries in Germany approach US levels, and the gap between emerging and wealthy countries becomes narrower.
Country-level averages can also be affected by sample bias, including differences in respondents’ locations within a country, employment sectors and career stages.
Harold Ribeiro, a physicist at Brazil’s Maringa State University, says that although 21% of respondents reported earning less than $15,000, a salary considered low or modest by US or western European standards “can provide a fairly comfortable life locally”, particularly outside expensive cities such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. “Still, I do not conclude that Brazilian scientists are generally well-paid,” he says. Salaries at public universities have risen in recent years, but Ribeiro says the increases followed a long period of stagnation and represent more of a recovery than a raise.
Pay satisfaction varies widely
Only 44% of all respondents said they were satisfied with their pay. Satisfaction varied by country: 61% of scientists in Canada, 68% in Germany and 55% in the United States said they were satisfied with their income. Among countries with more than 100 respondents, the lowest levels of pay satisfaction were reported in Turkey, at 27%, China, at 39%, and Italy, at 40%.
Pay satisfaction in China was below the global average even though salaries there appeared to be rising in US-dollar terms. Nature asked scientists the same question in 2021. This year, about 11% of Chinese respondents reported earning more than $80,000, almost double the 6% reported in 2021. In the United Kingdom, the proportion rose from 19% to only 22% over the same period.
Jingrui Sun, a freshwater ecologist at Yunnan University in Kunming, China, says salaries vary widely between the country’s economically developed coastal regions and its sparsely populated west, as well as between universities. He describes his own salary as “enough to live comfortably”. Research-intensive universities and institutions in wealthier parts of China commonly offer performance-related pay, housing subsidies and laboratory start-up packages, he says.
Higher salaries in China can come with additional demands. “Part of the package is linked to periodic evaluations, and if you fail to meet the required targets, your remuneration for the next period may be significantly reduced,” Sun says. Several of his colleagues had their salaries reduced this year after their university introduced stricter evaluation criteria. “Such changes can have a significant impact on staff retention, encouraging academics to leave and move on to other institutions,” he says.
Falling behind
Annual pay increases are not a global standard. Only 45% of respondents said they had received a raise in the previous 12 months, while 6% said their salary had been reduced. Researchers in industry were more likely than the average respondent to have received a raise, at 54%. Among those earning less than $50,000, only 42% had received one.
Many respondents expressed frustration about the absence of raises. A non-tenure-track researcher in a US biology department said he had exceeded the department’s tenure-track standards and outperformed several tenure-track colleagues. Those colleagues earned at least $20,000 more per year and received more research funding. “And yet department chairs keep looking at me and saying they don’t want a raise,” he says.
Even when salaries rise, the increase may not keep pace with living costs. A researcher on a fixed-term contract in Pune, India, says public-sector salaries have not kept up with “soaring urban inflation” in the city of 7 million people. Most of his salary goes towards rent, public transport and groceries. “No one would be able to afford a mortgage or a car loan on this salary,” he says. With children, he adds, “it’s just a matter of survival.”
In Europe, 27% of respondents reported earning more than $80,000 a year, but salaries vary substantially between countries, says Norbert Benze, president of Eurodoc, a European organization for young researchers. “A good salary in the Netherlands is very different from a good salary in Poland or Hungary.” Across the continent, he says, the cost of living is rising faster than wages. “Some researchers have observed that despite regular pay raises, actual purchasing power has declined quite sharply, in some cases by half over the past decade.”
Nature’s 2025 Eurodoc PhD Salary Survey, which focused on postdoctoral researchers and laboratory technicians, found that PhD students earned less than the minimum wage in five European countries: Hungary, Ireland, Poland, Romania and Ukraine. The survey is available at go.nature.com/4s7m1tu.
Respondents said that fairer and more transparent pay would be welcome, even if scientists remain underpaid. “It’s not just about increasing the amount of money, it’s important that compensation is clear, consistent, and feels tied to contribution,” says an Indian materials scientist. Researchers should understand how their pay is determined, how raises and promotions are awarded, and whether their compensation is competitive with the market, he says.
Researchers who did not take part in the survey expressed similar concerns after Nature shared its findings with them. Ronaldo Sousa, an aquatic ecologist at the Interdisciplinary Center for Marine and Environmental Research near Porto, says academic salaries in Portugal have risen in recent years, mainly to keep pace with inflation. To secure raises well above inflation, however, scientists must progress from assistant professor to associate professor. “You might publish a dozen high-impact papers a year, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into a salary increase,” he says.
Source: www.nature.com
