Sneak Peak at 2011-2012 Jobs in British Archaeology

[Unitof1]

it might also be more enlightening if a distinction was made between commercial and non commercial, if only to help sort out the distinction. Is the raw data accessible to such distinction?

[Doug]

I wonder Doug if your survey would be more 'useful' to archaeologists in general if instead of classifying the jobs by title you classified it by salary band. So for example ?12-15000, ?15001-18000, ?18001-21000 etc etc.

I suspect this would show that job titles in UK archaeology are largely irrelevant, unless it can be demonstrated that one job title falls wholly within a limited salary band...it might however serve to demonstrate that there is regional variation in pay rates.

It is not based on job titles at all. The titles used- excavator, supervisor, project officer, etc. are just for clarification so people have a vague idea of what the position is about. For example excavator, when I say excavator everyone knows what I am talking about even though some people call it digger, site assistant, archaeologists, etc.

The positions are based on the description of the job done (its why all the posts link to a methodology page). So excavator jobs are your entry level positions that record sites, supervisors are those in charge of a crew of diggers, project officers are your middle management who basically are in charge of the projects, project managers are your senior positions who technically are in charge of multiple projects or the whole office. (mind you with very small organizations the project manager could also be the excavator as well, there is some difference in levels between employers)

Putting work into bands I think would make the problem even worse. It means you could be doing project officer level work on the pay of an excavator. Which by the way does occur, one company is paying someone excavator wages to do all of their deskbased assessments. That person should be paid way more than the bottom level wages. You have some people in charge of 5 heritage sites getting paid 21,000 while others are getting 30k-40k for the same work.
It is why I include a distribution, to highlight the range and the fact that some people are getting screwed.

[Doug]

it might also be more enlightening if a distinction was made between commercial and non commercial, if only to help sort out the distinction. Is the raw data accessible to such distinction?

If you read through all my posts at the very begining I make the distiction between commercial and non-commercial and which is represented by the data. Though putting the data up so everyone can see will be done at some future point.

[Doug]

and the very last one, consultants- http://dougsarchaeology.wordpress.com/20...onsulting/

that's it all done for this year

[Martin Locock]

I think it would help readers to understand the survey better if it were called a survey of jobs advertised in British archaeology - although there must be some correlation between this and typical pay for those in post, the relationship isn't a simple one.

[Doug]

I think it would help readers to understand the survey better if it were called a survey of jobs advertised in British archaeology - although there must be some correlation between this and typical pay for those in post, the relationship isn't a simple one.

Actually it is. Here is some work I did a year ago on the subject of job posting relating to pay:

http://dougsarchaeology.wordpress.com/20...-be-right/

Average long term pay and average advertisement of pay lines up very nicely. Of course there is some fluctuation from year to year with job adverts but over all it is a nice solid fit.

Unless someone finds fault with my work (open to any suggestions of improvements or concern with numbers) the AVERAGES (can't stress enough that average is not what someone actually gets paid, but it tells you roughly what pay is, also I have distributions in there to show the range) line up and there is an incredibly strong correlation.

Of course these are the advertised rates and some people pay less or more but with sampling you get a rough estimate of pay.

In case anyone is wondering how this is possible, simple, most archaeology jobs are temp. excavator, supervisor, project officer. Who has held one of these jobs for more than five years with the same company? 5% 1% .0001% if you are moving jobs you getting paid the going rate.

Government jobs are even better. You get mandatory raises most times above inflation, (not counting the last few years of course) so even if you have had the same job for the last 20 yrs you are doing just fine. But even then, who does not move up the latter a little bit? e.g. apply for a new job and get that new pay?

[Dinosaur]

Where I work almost all of the 'core' staff of 25 or so have been in post for 5 years plus, in some cases 15-20 years plus, and have been offered jobs/promotions direct,, ads are only used where there's a need to bring in someone with a skill set not already available 'in house'. POs are mostly diggers-made-good, or occasionally an unsolicited CV gets someone a job. We can't be the only outfit operating like this (I know we're not). Do you have any data for how many companies you don't have data for? And what proportion of the profession this represents? Isn't your survey merely representative of employers who for whatever reason are unable to hold onto staff? :face-stir:

[Doug]

have been offered jobs/promotions direct,

Yep, that is just it though they get promotions. They move up in pay. The average working life of a digger is 5 years (being very very generous most don't last more than a year or 2, with the exception of that one who has been doing it for 25 years). People are going to be moving up all the time so the lower ranks are a revolving door of jobs.

While your company may not post ads, others do and you all are connected. Everyone has to bid for jobs. What are the costs accounted for in bids? 3 things- staff costs, overhead costs, and profit margin. To stay in business these costs have to line up fairly well with your competition. Yes, you can increase your profit margin by cutting your overhead or staff costs BUT you cut your staff costs too much and your staff sees that company so and so are paying x amount, they leave to get that job. While companies post jobs it is individuals that take them. This survey is about individuals and what they get paid not what company x pays.

Yes, the system is not perfect, lots of people stay with a job for other reasons than money or leave a job for other reasons than money. Small one man firms work out of their house to keep their overhead down. Yet, those one man shop can't take on big projects so they lose out on the more lucrative contracts. Basically, you are dealing with a constrained system in which pay can go only so high or so low. Your top is constrained by a competitive bidding process and your bottom is controlled by both the IfA and BAJR.

Yes, some people try to cheat the system and screw their employees. I am sure it happens all the time and there is not much the IfA will do about it and BAJR won't post their jobs (the IfA will post them, so this survey captures those low ball pay offerings). However, someone just has to look at this survey or job postings to see they are getting screwed and leave the job. Its why I posting all of this, not because I love spending hours of my life looking at job postings but so people can have an idea if they are getting screwed or not.

Do you have any data for how many companies you don't have data for? And what proportion of the profession this represents? Isn't your survey merely representative of employers who for whatever reason are unable to hold onto staff?

That's why I point to the profiling the profession report to show that this data lines up with it. Second dataset collected from a different source lines up with my data source.

I CAN NOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH- this data covers a wide range of sources. Some employers will be better than others when it comes to pay, congrats if you work for them. Some will be worse for pay, might be time to consider a change. This is stats not personal experience based research. In other words my favorite quote "Maybe it's not everyone else that has a problem, Maybe it's you".

If anyone thinks that the numbers are wrong based on personal experience please do share so that we may know which people to avoid working for or who to get a job with BUT I think we will find that pay falls pretty much within the distribution seen in the data. No one is making 25k as an excavator or 8K (converted to hourly pay, not actually pay. If you only work 2 months you are probably making 2k a year).

[Dinosaur]

Good post, well explained :face-approve:

[kevin wooldridge]

And there are some excavators earning 25k a year...not many I grant you but a few.

I don't think there is as much flexibility as you suggest when you say that archaeologists will ditch a lower paid employer and go and work for a higher paid one......surely not. Most people are much more rational than that and would take into account the length of contract on offer, closeness to home etc etc. Not that that matters to many archaeologists who are just looking for work - any work - rather than negotiating from a position of some security and looking to improve upon it....

I think where all archaeological employment surveys suffer from distortion is taking into account the length of contract. Its fine to say that diggers earn on average 16.5k a year, but that does assume they are working full time and/or have contracts for a full 12 months.....not always the case. I know for example some UK based diggers who take maybe one or more overseas jobs each year and use that as a cash bonus to in effect subsidise their continuing work (or unemployment) in the UK for the rest of the year. Or are for the most part one-person operations - in a variety of roles - for most of the year, but happy to take on one or two 'employed' jobs as and when they arise, if they fit with their other plans. So it isn't the survey that's at fault or the data collected, its more to do with whether the types of employment suggested really do reflect the profession as a whole. Maybe what Profiling the Profession should do is to look at a typical archaeological employment history in addition to looking at the pure statistics of wages, job gradings and the number of employers and job adverts...