Nature’s 2026 Science Job Satisfaction Survey finds that pay remains a major source of concern for scientists worldwide. 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. Although salaries vary substantially by country, sector and career stage, many scientists said their purchasing power has fallen and that pay systems are often unclear or disconnected from performance.
This is the second article in a series examining the results of Nature’s 2026 Science Job Satisfaction Survey, the latest edition of a study that began in 2010. Previous surveys were conducted in 2018 and 2021.
The 2026 survey was created in partnership with London-based research consultancy Thinks Insight & Strategy. It launched in May and was promoted through Nature.com, Springer Nature’s digital products and email campaigns. A total of 3,882 people from 133 countries took part through self-selection. Of the respondents, 31% described themselves as women and 19% said they belonged to an ethnic minority group in the country where they worked. The complete survey dataset is available at go.nature.com/4b2drrc.
Pay failing to keep pace
Umar, a mathematics lecturer in northern Nigeria, has worked at universities for more than 10 years. During that time, he received only one pay increase, in 2024, when the government raised the national minimum wage. His income has not been adjusted for inflation or promotion and no longer covers his basic living expenses. He now has to borrow money, take on additional work and reduce essential spending.
“Unfortunately, my experience is not unique to Nigerian scientists,” he says.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Ashley, a young physicist on a fixed-term contract at a university in the eastern United States, says she is substantially 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 that homeownership is also out of reach. She believes she did everything “right”, including working alongside 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 are pseudonyms, and the two scientists 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 thousands of other scientists about their 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 it did not cover even those.
The survey asked respondents to convert their gross, or pre-tax, salary into US dollars and select the relevant income range. More than half reported earning less than $50,000 a year, while 22% earned at least $80,000.
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 may partly reflect changes in the survey’s geographic composition, particularly the larger proportion of respondents from Asia. Asian respondents accounted for 10% of the sample in 2021 and 39% in 2026.
Among continents with enough respondents for comparison, scientists in North America reported the highest salaries, followed by those in Europe and Asia.
Industry pays more than academia
Salaries in industry were 66% higher than those in academia. Researchers in industry were also more likely to be satisfied with their pay: 58% said they were satisfied, compared with 43% of those working in academia.
Even in the private sector, however, some scientists believe they should earn more. A researcher at a biomedical technology company in a large Midwestern city, who asked Nature to withhold her name so that she could discuss salary concerns, says: “Every year, I feel like I’m making less money.”
After learning that she was pregnant, the researcher decided that she could no longer afford childcare on her previous salary. She moved from a university job to her current position four years ago. Despite having more than a dozen years of experience in both industry and academia, she says her salary remains comparable to that of a new graduate.
“I love science and my job, but I also feel undervalued,” she says.
Purchasing power changes the picture
Among the 10 countries with more than 100 respondents, scientists based in the United States reported the highest salaries. About 65% of US-based scientists said they earned more than $80,000 a year. The lowest reported salaries were in India, where 53% earned less than $15,000 annually.
Africa had the lowest salaries of the continents, with 61% of respondents earning less than $15,000 a year.
These figures, however, do not show what people can actually buy with their income in their home countries. A dollar has greater purchasing power in India than in the United States — almost five times as much, according to the survey’s comparison. Based on 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 average salaries in the United States, while salaries in Germany approach US levels. The adjustment also narrows the large pay gap between emerging and wealthy countries.
Country averages in the survey may be affected by sampling differences, including respondents’ locations within a country, employment sectors and career stages.
Harold Ribeiro, a physicist at Brazil’s Maringá 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 in Brazil have increased in recent years, Ribeiro says, but this followed a long period of stagnation and represents more of a recovery than a pay rise.
Pay satisfaction varies by country
Overall, only 44% of respondents said they were satisfied with their pay. Satisfaction was higher than the global average in Canada, where 61% of scientists were satisfied, Germany, where 68% were satisfied, and the United States, where the figure was 55%.
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 the survey data suggest that Chinese salaries are rising in US-dollar terms. In 2026, about 11% of Chinese respondents reported earning more than $80,000, nearly double the 6% reported in 2021. Over the same period, the proportion of respondents in the United Kingdom earning more than $80,000 rose from 19% to 22%.
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.
Sun describes his salary as “enough to live comfortably”. He says research-intensive universities and institutions in wealthy parts of China commonly offer performance-based pay, housing subsidies and laboratory start-up packages.
But these higher salaries can come with additional demands, he says.
“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 have had their salaries reduced this year after their university introduced more rigorous evaluation criteria, he says. “Such changes can have a significant impact on staff retention, encouraging academics to leave and move on to other institutions.”
Scientists falling behind
Annual pay increases are not a global standard. Only 45% of respondents said they had received a pay increase in the previous 12 months, while 6% said their salary had been reduced.
Industry researchers were more likely than the average respondent to have received a raise, at 54%. Among people earning less than $50,000 a year, only 42% had received one.
Many respondents expressed frustration about the absence of pay increases. A researcher in a US biology department who does not hold a tenure-track position said they 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,” the researcher says.
Even when salaries do increase, the rise may not keep pace with living costs. A researcher on a fixed-term contract in Pune, India, said public-sector salaries were failing to match “soaring urban inflation” in the city of 7 million people.
The researcher says most of their salary goes towards rent, public transport and groceries. “With this salary, no one would be able to afford a mortgage or a car loan,” they say. With children, the researcher adds, “it’s just a matter of survival.”
In Europe, 27% of respondents said they earned more than $80,000 a year, but salaries differ substantially between countries, says Norbert Benze, president of Eurodoc, a European organisation for young researchers.
“A good salary in the Netherlands is very different from a good salary in Poland or Hungary,” he says.
Across the continent, however, the cost of living is rising faster than wages, Benze says. “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.
Calls for greater transparency
Survey participants said that fairer and more transparent pay would be welcome, even if scientists remain underpaid.
“It’s not just about paying more, it’s about making compensation feel clear, consistent and tied to contribution,” says an Indian materials scientist. Researchers need to understand how their pay is determined, how raises and promotions are awarded, and whether their salaries are competitive with the market, the scientist says.
Researchers who did not take part in the survey expressed similar views after Nature shared the results with them. Ronaldo Sousa, an aquatic ecologist at the Interdisciplinary Center for Marine and Environmental Research near Porto, says academic salaries in Portugal have increased in recent years, mainly to keep pace with inflation.
To receive increases substantially above inflation, however, scientists must progress through the academic ranks, moving from assistant professor to associate professor, Sousa says.
“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