The Public Health SPOTlight Podcast: stories, inspiration, and guidance to build your dream public health career

How much can I get paid in public health?, with Sujani

• PH SPOT • Episode 153

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In this episode, we lift the veil on public health salaries and discover how transparency in salary discussions can pave the way for more informed career decisions in public health.

Sujani walks us through her own career, from initial salary to current earnings, and discusses starting income ranges of other public health professionals collected from a  LinkedIn post and how factors like sector, region, and experience play pivotal roles in shaping your earning potential.  Sujani also guides you through a range of resources, from government pages to platforms like PayScale and Glassdoor, offering a realistic perspective on what new grads and seasoned professionals alike can anticipate in terms of compensation. By encouraging transparency, we aim to empower our community with the knowledge needed to make empowered career choices.


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Speaker 1:

Welcome to PH Spotlight, a community for you to build your public health career with. Join us weekly right here, and I'll be here too. Your host, sujani Siva from PH Spot. Hey, welcome back to another episode here on the PH Spot Podcast. This is Sujani, and today we have a episode which is me. It's one of those solo episodes where I bring you either career advice, some tips, some reflections, and there won't be a guest, it will just be me, and the topic that we're going to explore today is one that is quite popular, I think, regardless of the industry or field you're in.

Speaker 1:

When we think about careers and jobs and work, it's a question that comes up a lot, right? And that question is how much can I get paid and specifically, how much can I get paid in public health? And everyone asks this question at some point in their careers, and I don't think you only ask the question once. I think you ask this question to yourself, maybe on Google, maybe you ask other people, but it's a question that likely comes up at multiple points in your career, right? But I bet that if you're early in your career, it is a question that probably comes up a lot for you, and if you are someone who's been asking other people this question. Good for you. I think it's a topic that we don't bring up enough and the resources. If you dig around and do some research on the internet, you will be able to find answers. But I think if we can make talking about earning potential how much one can earn a normal part of our conversations, I think it would be quite nice. I think it will allow you to plan the future of your career a little bit better. It will allow you to make more informed choices.

Speaker 1:

For me, I think I've tried to bring up this topic wherever I can. One of the first times I think I brought it up was probably through a blog post. Somebody had contributed a post around this topic and then, kind of, the next time I had brought it up was on my LinkedIn page and I'll be sure to share that link so that you can go and read it for yourself. And actually this episode is inspired by that post that I made and the contributions of people on LinkedIn who are part of my community that also added some of their experiences and their salaries when they first started off in public health.

Speaker 1:

And so I'm going to start off by answering this question with an answer that you probably won't love, which is it depends and I know nobody loves that answer. You know when you're really really looking for an answer, especially for a question like this, where you're asking somebody like, hey, how much can I get paid in public health? And if that answer ends up being, ah, you know, it really depends. We don't, we don't love that, but I won't spend too much time on why it depends. I will give you some numbers that to work with. But it's, it's really the truth, because you do have to think about. Even with a public health degree or background, you do have to think about what sector you want to work in. The region is also going to matter here, and the level of experience that you have is also going to play a role in the amount that you get paid for doing public health work. So, in short, the answer to this question is going to vary, and we are a global platform, so PHSpot serves a global community.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to focus my answer on North America because that's where I'm based and it's also I know it a little bit more. I'm in Canada and a lot of the contributions I got when I asked this question on LinkedIn were also from individuals in North America. But if you're listening and you're from another part of the world and you want to contribute, kind of your salary dollar numbers, I'll put the link to that LinkedIn post and I really want you to go and engage in that post and share your experience, because I think when we can do that, we can equip each other with you know, all of the right facts and points to make decisions in our career. So what I'm going to do first is talk about my experience and then I will also talk about the experience of a few community members who had contributed to this question, and then I will also point you to some resources so that you can go and do your own research. Okay, so when it comes to me, my first job out of grad school out of grad school, so at this point I have cumulative of about two plus years of public health experience through various research assistant jobs I did while I was pursuing my master's program, and then some experience I had gained during my undergraduate time and some volunteer work I had done, where I did some research and did some, you know, developing of databases or worked with some data.

Speaker 1:

So out of grad school, I had two years of experience but they weren't two years at a single organization, a single role, and so I had an undergraduate degree and I had a master's of public health degree, and the role that I was hired in for was called data officer, but essentially it was an outbreak epidemiologist role, and this was in 2013. So this episode is going out in 2024, the beginning of 2024. And so that is about 11 years ago, and 11 years ago my starting salary in this role was $64,505 Canadian dollars. It was a permanent position and it did have benefits. The job was in Canada, about an hour away from Toronto, and it was with the federal government, and I had some of the right skills that they were looking for, especially managing and developing databases, so that was key. And then I also mentioned some of the additional kind of skills and knowledge that I had gained from coursework and, as I mentioned earlier, I had no full time work experience at this point. So this was quote unquote my first big kid job, and so I earned $64,505 in 2013 right out of grad school, and now, about 11 years later, still with the federal government, my salary is hovering just around $130,000 Canadian, and still full time permanent role with benefits.

Speaker 1:

So next what I'm going to do is share the salaries of other individuals who had contributed in this post that I had made on LinkedIn and I try to order their responses kind of chronologically. But there is a point I want to make comparing my starting salary in 2013 to what it is now kind of in that similar role, and I'll do that towards the end because I want to go chronologically. So one of the posts the individual shared that her first job post MPH that was in 2017. And it was as an evaluation specialist at a small digital health organization and her starting pay was about 73,000 Canadian dollars. It was a contract position. She didn't have any benefits and there were no paid vacations, so essentially, if she took a vacation it would be unpaid. She did note that this digital health organization she worked for was fantastic. The work environment was great, she felt like it was fair pay and she added that you know she's found generally that when she has gotten contract position, the pay was a little bit more and maybe it's because you know there's the lack of benefits and security and that this role that she got paid 73,000 dollars right out of grad school that it was more of a traditional health care sector job rather than specifically within the field of public health, which would also affect kind of the salary expectations.

Speaker 1:

The next individual shared that they had another like it's another government job that we're going to talk about but theirs was at the provincial level in Alberta in Canada and they reported a starting pay of 70,500 and that was in 2018. And they also noted that their first job post bachelor's degree was in 2012 with the health research nonprofit organization and their pay at kind of like a full-time role was about 43,000 dollars. Another individual shared that she graduated with her MPH in May of 2021 and it took her about six months to find a role, and when she did as a data analyst, her pay was about 70,000 USD so now we're talking about US dollars. And then when she moved into her second role, still as a data analyst, her starting salary was 80,000 USD. And then we had two additional contributions and I don't have dates for these so it's hard to kind of compare.

Speaker 1:

But another individual mentioned that they worked for their city's health department as an epidemiologist and they took home about 50,000 dollars I am not sure if that was Canadian dollars or USD and another individual mentioned that their first job post MPH was as a casual employee, so it was temporary, no benefits, and that was with the federal government in Canada and that was at about 55,000 dollars. And then later, because she had previous student experience and they were able to bridge her into a higher level and pay her a starting salary of $70,000 and that was a permanent job with benefits. And so here's the piece that I wanted to share was that you know, roughly when we look at this, you can earn anywhere between 50 to 70 thousand dollars when you're a recent grad. And the last bit of information that the individual shared, where they got bridged in from being that casual employee into a full-time role and they were earning about 70 thousand dollars, that is essentially the same kind of categorization of that role at the federal level that I was in. So I had taken on that entry level job at that level and typically it's classified under economics and social science services EC is the code and out of grad school you would typically join at the EC3 or EC4 level depending on the role. And this information is all available online and I will share that. And so if we look at that the individual you know, whose salary information I shared at the end, they had mentioned that their starting was 70 thousand dollars and, if you recall, I had shared my salary info and that was at about 64 thousand dollars for that same role, and so when I go to this table that they have posted online and I'll share the link in the show notes page, the rate of pay as of 2023 is 74 thousand dollars for the EC3 and 80 thousand dollars, starting for the EC4, which has gone up since I was an EC4. So 11 years ago, the starting pay was about 64 thousand dollars and that same position now starts at 80 thousand dollars, which I think is really great to see that that increase is happening. So that's the piece I wanted to mention, because the year in which these individuals, you know, landed that job and the salary information that I'm sharing with you, it's important to keep in mind the year as well.

Speaker 1:

Okay, additionally, another piece of information I want to talk about when it comes to salary is self-employment. It may not be something that is obvious, I think, in the public health world, I personally love to talk about entrepreneurship and self-employment when it comes to public health professionals and, in 2021, a group of public health consultants, ones who I'm friends with, whose episode actually aired a couple of episodes ago, so I hope you listen to that. They set out to understand this group of self-employed entrepreneurs a bit better, and part of that research they did was to understand how much they made, and so they collected data from about 120 public health consultants based in the US, and they found that their net income so this is what they took home after the expenses they had to pay was about 80,000 USD when they were doing it full-time, and for anybody who was doing it part-time, they were earning. 28,000 dollars is their net income. Majority of them charged an hourly price structure, and it averaged at around 120 dollars an hour USD. So I think that's incredible right to be able to earn 80,000 dollars working for yourself, have maximum flexibility in terms of your schedule and time, and then even the the part-time dollar amount I think is very interesting, because you can have a full-time job, say, at around 80,000 dollars, 70,000 dollars and you can essentially supplement it by being a part-time entrepreneur with roughly 30,000 dollars more net income. So that's what you're taking home after the expenses. So I hope you will consider that as an option, right, whether you want to go into self-employment full-time eventually, or even consider it part-time. It's definitely worth exploring.

Speaker 1:

Inside the Public Health Career Club, we have a number of individuals who are exploring consulting or entrepreneurship, and I hold office hours in there for anybody who's just wanting to get their idea off the ground we call them mentor hours for side hustles, and so if you're ever looking for a community where you want to either meet other people who are doing this type of work or just want to ask questions in that safe community, definitely consider joining us. So, to summarize, as a new grad, it looks like you can earn somewhere between 50 to 70, even $80,000 when you're graduating, and it's kind of that first job that you have, with some maybe part-time, casual experience that you could show when you're entering kind of this role. I encourage you now to not only take this episode or the LinkedIn post that I'm going to share the link to as your single piece of information, but rather to do a bit more research yourself, and I'm going to help with that and point you to a few different resources, and if you have found any other resources that could be helpful, definitely do share them with us and then I could update our show notes page. So the first and most obvious place to start are job postings, right. So organizations are definitely getting better with pay transparency and many are starting to disclose the pay in their job postings. Additionally, government agencies are required to have pay information listed. So these are all great places to look.

Speaker 1:

Whether it's your federal, provincial, territorial or local government career pages, you'll definitely find some sort of information to help you understand pay in that kind of area of work. You can use these along with the organization's website. So you know, sometimes you look at a job posting and it might say pay scale at level three and they may not list out the actual dollar amount. So you're going to have to do some digging around on the government websites and fill in some of the gaps yourself. So for the federal Canadian government, for example, it's the Treasury Board Secretariat that would post the salary information, and I'll include that link in our show notes page. And, like I mentioned, right. So the rate of pay for a new grad 11 years ago was essentially $10,000 to $15,000 less than it is now. So the Canadian federal government does a good job to even show you historical salaries, so it gives you a sense of how things have changed. Similarly, I encourage you to check out your government pages Rates of Pay, whether that's in Canada or another country.

Speaker 1:

I'm sure there will be lots of good information there, in addition to, obviously, the job postings, and we send out weekly newsletters which you can sign up for at phspotorg slash. Sign up and we send out job opportunities every week and we do a really good job to find opportunities with salary information and include that in our email every week. So the next place I will send you to our public directories and repositories. It's not the best, I think, when it comes to public health database, but there are two well-known crowdsourced databases for salary. There are options to search by job titles or organization or company. Like I said, the availability of information on public health salaries is not plenty, but I think it's a good start and the two places for you to start are pay scale and glass door. So check those public directories out. It's essentially a place where people come and post their salary information and often you have to either make an account to see the information or you have to contribute your salary info so that you can get the access to the entire database. So just play around with those two directories and maybe there are others as well.

Speaker 1:

And then, finally, I think things like this right, talking about it is where you're going to find information, so make it a norm to share salary information. Yeah, it's uncomfortable, just like I did today. I was debating should I be sharing my info, but you know, part of me was like why gate keep this kind of information, which is really public information? So, with that thought in mind, I kicked off that LinkedIn thread that I keep referring to to get people to share their salary information, and people did, which was amazing.

Speaker 1:

It became the inspiration for this episode and I really hope it inspires you and more people to talk amongst themselves, right, whether that's casually, to be like hey, I just got a job and I get paid this much, or in a more systematic way and through different projects and on LinkedIn and conversations, whatever it is, I really hope that we can start having more conversations around pay and earning potential in public health.

Speaker 1:

So if you would like to contribute to this thread, please go find the link in the show notes page and tell me how much you make in your public health job and share that with our community. So I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it to be super valuable. I know I was desperate for this information when I first started off. I really didn't know what to expect or how to even handle pay coming out of grad school. So you know, I'm just really grateful that I'm in a place right now, grateful for the community to have contributed information and their experiences so that I could create this episode and share all of this information with you. So until next time, this is Sujani, and thank you so much for being a part of this community.