The Gender Gap in Employment and Salary for Students Who Earned Doctorates in 2020

The National Science Foundation recently released its annual data on doctoral degree recipients in the United States. Data from the annual Survey of Earned Doctorates details the employment plans of students after they received their doctoral degrees.

In 2020, slightly more than 9,000 of the 25,886 women, or 35.2 percent, who earned doctoral degrees had firm commitments of employment by the time they received their degree. This was slightly higher than the percentage of men who had firm job offers by the time they received their doctoral degrees.

For 2020 doctoral recipients who had a job offer, 47.1 percent of women had accepted positions in the academic arena. For men who had job offers, only 33 percent were heading to academia. Roughly 7 percent of men and women who earned doctorates were heading to jobs in government or the public sector. Of women who had firm employment commitments by the time they received their doctorate, 29.2 percent had jobs in the corporate world compared to nearly half of men who had job commitments by the time they were awarded their doctorate. Women were more likely than men to receive employment offers from the nonprofit sector.

For all doctoral recipients in 2020 who had employment commitments by the time they received their doctorate, women were to receive a median salary of $75,000 compared to a median salary for men of $100,000. The far larger percentage of male doctoral recipients taking jobs in business and industry undoubtedly is a major reason for the salary gender gap for new doctoral recipients. Yet in the field of education, the median salary for men was still $5,000 higher than the median salary for women.