Profiling the Profession 2012-13 is Now Out

[Doug]

[h=5]Profiling the Profession 2012-13 is Now Out http://bit.ly/1hweqhd

For those unaware it is a sort of census of archaeologists working in the UK that happens every five years. The last one occurred right before the great recession and this one really highlights the absolute pounding that the profession took. It is a good resource for those considering a career in archaeology in the UK.

If anyone has any questions on it please feel free to drop me a line, I am one of the authors. Though apologies if I don't get back to you right away, I am starting a new job so a bit busy.[/h]

[pdurdin]

Oh dear, you mis-spelt hosty's name... :face-huh:

[BAJR]

Yup.... it is always good to see somebody elses name David CONNOLLY ... in case anyone is listening.

as it is a pdf online, it would be pleasing to see that corrected.



As ever... and to head off the probable WTF moments. it may be useful to explain the average salary of archaeologists carefully. and how this was worked out. ...

ANyways... good show... carry on

[monty]

"On average, full-time archaeologists earned £27,814 per annum." ha ha ha ha ha ha ! .......................

and what about this :" Over the five years from 2007-08 to 2012-13, the average salaries of archaeologists increased by 19%. "...........[SIZE=1].i[SIZE=2]n fact my salary reduced by 60% !!!![/SIZE][/SIZE]

[monty]

Even more hilarious: "Overall, archaeological employers demonstrate a high level of commitment to training their staff, although the levels of support shown by several key indicators have declined since 2007-08.
90% of employers identified training needs for individuals and provided training for paid staff (in 2007-08, 93% did). 46% had a formal training plan (52% did in 2007-08) and 45% formally evaluated the impact of training on individuals (48% did in 2007-08). 26% evaluated the impact of training on the organisation (28% in 2007-08), compared with 75% which identified needs for the organisation as a whole (76% in 2007-08)."

[gonetopot]

Given that just 17% work in academia, they don't hlaf drag the average salary for all archaeologicst up. Still the average wage in the commercial sector of £24,757 doesn't seem so bad when you factor in managers, specialists etc, and seems to me to be less far behind the national average (c.£26k?) than in previous years, but that might be because other sectors have declined somewhat. Need to take time to read in more detail, but just goes to confirm how commercial archaeology is still getting the thin end of the wedge relative to its proportion of industry.

[gonetopot]

...and we're now facing a serious skills shortage in post field work analysis....just when money is tight....you so suprise me. I think contractors have to face the reality that they too have to see work to its conclusion and budget accordingly (inclusing training) and not blame this solely on the developer, even though I know they hate paying for work they can't physically see. So many of the problems are underlying within the industry...apathy, resignation who knows, but I hope this document achieves a wide circulation so as many as possible see the situation in black and white. Well done to all involved.

[Doug]

As ever... and to head off the probable WTF moments. it may be useful to explain the average salary of archaeologists carefully. and how this was worked out. ...

ANyways... good show... carry on

Yes- to copy and paste from your ? on FB-

So average is based on yearly income but not hours worked. So to use me as an example my last archaeology job had me at 16k and some change. But I only worked a month and half so really my take home for the year for that archaeology job was much less than that. Unfortunately- we have enough problems getting people to fill out the survey and complaints about it being toooooooo loooooooonnnnnnngggggggg. So we really can't ask people to give the exact amount each person worked for and how much they made individual for 2500 responses. People would be pissed. It is best to look at it as a per hour bases e.g. 16k a year = 8 something an hour. I blame it on your cultural problems of giving salaries in per annum and not per hour If only someone with the power to regulate how people advertise jobs could require it to be in per hour we would be good .

Also- one needs to understand averages. If one is employed and based on yearly salaries (not hours worked) then the lowest you will have will be about 16k (there were a few 12k and lower than 16k but not many). It also means that a few people in the 80k range (which there are) can really drag up the average because the lowest is 16k not 0. A better measurement is median (which are all lower) AND to think about it as per hour pay.

Now, I know there are going to be lots of people who are going to scough at those numbers and say HA I don't know anyone who makes that much and it could be true. There are a lot of archaeologists and some of them make very nice salaries. I am firmly in the other group who since being in the UK I don't think I have broken 12k a year (there is hope for this year, fingers crossed). Though having a look at the numbers I know that there are many archaeologists who do just fine.

David and I were just talking the other day about an archaeologists living in a mansion and sending their kids to public schools (you know, the kind that cost as much as the yearly salary of digger). Many of us may be poor but with enough rich archaeologists the average will be dragged up (also- there really are many who live just fine, even if it is not you or I).

Hope that explains the sticker shock of average salaries.

PS- also remember 1/3 of the jobs were wiped out. While jobs at councils and national bodies have suffered- they didn't suffer as much as lets say diggers. So there is a bit of survival bias in the data (commercial archaeology suffered the most and they tend to have the lowest salaries). Though with EH getting butchered I am betting in five years salaries will be down.

[Unitof1]

Its good to see that they are attempting to separate out the type of unit-charity trust etc. Its also good to see that they try recognise the concept of self employed. I agree with doug that trying to describe the industry in yearly salary terms does not suit an industry that works on contracts that are often far short of a year and where people like doug are not on a salary for the whole year. £16grand is all pie. I don't know if it is a paradigm thing from some constraint made by the commissioners of the survey requiring yearly salary view but I think that it is a great shame that they did not present a Post profile (in an appendix 1) of respondents who claimed to be self-employed when they obviously went to the trouble to ask people if they were self-employed and when a lot of the reported problems of the survey were reported in appendix 2 as

I think there is a problem where one‐person or other very small companies try to
meet standards developed for larger organisations. This has arisen with both IfAregistration and Achilles UVDB accreditation

I am a sole trader, providing a range of site, PX, training and illustration services. I have only been back trading since May this year

Responses are from the viewpoint of a single specialist officer

Could probably do with a few more questions about using self employed staff, which we predominately do. We can pay them better and generally they are betterarchaeologists

Obviously Im a self employed consultant so you will need to take that into account

This survey is not that appropiate for freelance/ sole trader finds specialists

My company has only been operating for a little over 12 months and I work parttime.I don't employ permanent staff and only employ staff when I need to,

Couple of points ‐ survey not well set out for one person organisations

As I work as a self‐employed sole trader, some of the questions are difficult toanswer, so have been left blank.

We have noticed the rise of 0 hours contracts as a response to huge fluctuations in work load and a proliferation of 'one man bands' able to carry out small scale works very cheaply.

After taking early retirement/redundancy from EH in 2010 I set up as selfemployed and have earned only a small amount since then on a consultancy basis.

Much of this survey is not really relevant to a sole‐trader

I am a freelance lithic specialist. Over the past 5 years I have also undertakentemporary teaching contracts in a university

Notes: I'm basically a one‐man band, with part‐time admin support. I wentfreelance after losing my job.

This survey seems to have been drawn up so as to exclude those of us offeringspecialist services(in my case pottery analysis and reporting)and the role of the sole trader/ free,ance operator

As a sole trader with no staff, some of this is difficult to fill in sensibly

As a single‐person organisation, some of the questions are difficult to answer in a helpful way

I am a self‐employed archaeologistand buildings analyst

As a consultant operating as a sole trader most of what you ask is not relevant to me.

This questionnaire is not really suited to small businesses like ourselves. We are two people ‐ we do not intend to grow beyond this and our small size is part of our business plan. So the turnover question in terms of £m is laughable.

Obviously I'm a very small organisation and have actually lost one staff member

Questions largely irrelevant to one person business ‐ I may spend a few hoursstudying some particular technical point (and thereby learning),

Some questions quite difficult to answer as a single archaeologist working in a localauthority planning department

Its bloody brilliant to see that us self-employed pretty much dominate the problems with the survey. Hay folks when is somebody going to see that its all about copyrights. (sorry sorry sorry) and when sometime soon it will be seen that we are the only archaeologists that there are.

[Doug]

Its good to see that they are attempting to separate out the type of unit-charity trust etc. Its also good to see that they try recognise the concept of self employed..... I don't know if it is a paradigm thing from some constraint made by the commissioners of the survey requiring yearly salary view but I think that it is a great shame that they did not present a Post profile (in an appendix 1) of respondents who claimed to be self-employed when they obviously went to the trouble to ask people if they were self-employed and when a lot of the reported problems of the survey were reported in appendix 2 as

Hey Unit, first thanks for compliments.

A lot of data is in there because someone might need it. A lot of it is in there because of legacy e.g. we want a time view of data so we keep asking the same questions. Averages being in there for both reasons.

So post profiles- I briefly pulled together some info for a post profile on the subject but it was all over the place- Some people made 8k and some 40k so a lot of what is in a post profile- average wage, ages. Would have been all over the place and pretty much useless in terms of how post profiles are presented.

However, the data is going to be in ADS so you can have a look at the raw numbers if you want. Though you will find self-employed captures such a wide range of activities- ceramic specialists to museum archaeologists it will be a bit hard to say anything general about them.

Finally, I would say you highlight a really great issue with this survey- does it represent my concerns be it for self-employed, digger, government etc. The short answer is, not perfectly. For example, some of the responses to the question about turnover was- hey we are a council department we don't have turnover.

The survey captures all archaeologists and we are very very diverse. Museum archaeologists do not have the same concerns as an illustrator or monument inspector or (insert one of the hundreds of possible jobs archaeologists have). Some questions are more applicable to one group over others. The trick is finding the right balance between everyone conflicting needs to keep the survey under 100s of questions. I imagine everyone will have an opinion on what data should and should not have been collected based on their own experiences or needs. We tried to take a more balanced approach and get little bit for every i.e. piss off everyonexx( by not asking all the questions they want.

Like all datasets it is best worked with by taking what you need from it. For example-The Invisible Diggers is probably the best example of what conditions are like for diggers. PP can act as a way to highlight the poor pay conditions relative to other archaeologists for diggers.

Or as you did with your example of pulling out the quotes- the quantitative data can give you a decent understand of some of the problems faced by self-employed etc. etc.

Like tools in your tool kit- a trowel is a good tool but not the only tool. It does a great job cleaning stuff but a poor job of measuring anything, for that you need a tape. PP is a tool but not the only tool for looking at the conditions of archaeology in the UK. Like any good tool kit it works well when you have a diverse range of tools in it.