Today the first Salary benchmarking report is published. – CIfA Press Release
Purpose of the report
Salary benchmarking is widely used to compare salaries for different roles within a profession, track how salaries have changed over time or in relation to inflation or other benchmarks and compare salaries for roles in one profession against equivalent roles in similar professions.
Methodology
For 2024, we benchmarked archaeological salaries using data from job adverts posted on CIfA’s Jobs Information Service bulletin (JIST) and the British Archaeological Jobs Resource (BAJR) from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024.
The benchmarking highlighted minimum, maximum and average salaries for a sample of job roles chosen to represent different sub-sectors and levels of seniority across the public, private and third sectors. Job roles were also mapped to CIfA accreditation grades to show minimum, maximum and average advertised salaries for roles requiring Practitioner (PCIfA), Associate (ACIfA) and Member (MCIfA) level competence.
The average advertised salaries for PCIfA, ACIfA and MCIfA level roles were also compared with equivalent roles from other sectors including construction, surveying, museums, ecology and environmental management.
You can find out more about the methodology and results of the benchmarking at CIfA and pay | Chartered Institute for Archaeologists.
Next steps
The publication of this report is a starting point not a conclusion.
Alongside the 2024 benchmarking work, CIfA’s Board of Directors has been considering how it can take forward the two resolutions passed by members at the EGM in April 2024. Providing information and support to the sector to meet the challenges it faces is a key to that. We believe that our benchmarking approach – which we will be developing further to provide useful information to members – will satisfy the legally achievable goals of both EGM motions. It gives us better tools to track trends in pay, compare with similar fields and highlight challenges for the sector. The data will underpin CIfA’s wider advocacy work on the value of archaeologists and their work to society as well as supporting sector partners in their campaigns for fair pay and recruitment leading to a stronger, more diverse workforce.
Thanks to
CIfA would like to thank all the members and stakeholders who took the time to contribute to this process but particularly the Project Advisory Group members
- Ben Ford, MCIfA Prospect
- David Connolly, MCIfA BAJR
- James Drummond-Murray, MCIfA
- Mike D’Aprix, ACIfA CIfA Advisory Council
- Sakshi Surana, PCIfA CIfA Early Careers Group
You can see the full analysis below
2025 Salary benchmarking report
More information about the salary benchmarking work can be found in the interim report issued in October 2024.
