The Postdoc Experience

An insecure career stage, from Europe to Aarhus

Thorbjörn Sievert

Postdoc appreciation week

This September, Aarhus University will celebrate Postdoc Appreciation Week (PAW), a week dedicated to recognising the valuable contributions of postdoctoral researchers and strengthening connections across the AU community.

AU Postdoc Appreciation Week

Academia’s drudge labourers

The data “paint postdocs as academia’s drudge labourers: overworked, underpaid, appointed on precarious short-term contracts and lacking recognition for their efforts” (Nordling 2023b).

“A distinctive feature of today’s academia is its hypercompetitive environment and culture, which often leads to aggressive and harmful working environments. Postdoctoral researchers, in particular, are under immense pressure to continually compete and perform at extreme levels” (Parada et al. 2025).

The scale of the problem

A 2026 meta-analysis pooling 228 samples and 138,446 early-career researchers found that:

• 29.9% report elevated psychological distress across outcomes
• depressive symptoms roughly two to three times, and anxiety symptoms three to five times, higher than in age-matched general-population samples (Dreisoerner et al. 2026)

A structural pattern

• Prevalence and severity were comparable across gender, country, discipline, and career stage
• Small but significant effects for age and prior mental-health history
• Most frequently cited driver: a mismatch between the growing number of PhD graduates and the limited number of permanent academic positions (Dreisoerner et al. 2026)

What satisfies and what doesn’t

Most satisfied with	% satisfied	Least satisfied with	% dissatisfied
Interest in the work	75%	Job security	56%
Degree of independence	73%	Career-advancement opportunities	49%
Interesting projects	72%

The pattern has held since 2020: postdocs like the work itself and dislike its stability (Research 2023).

The puzzle

65% of postdocs plan to base their career in academia. It is “extremely unlikely that 65% will end up in tenured or in long-term academic positions in their fields” (Nordling 2023b).

Europe and the Nordics

The contract treadmill

• 41.5% of European postdocs have already held three or more temporary research contracts
• 78.7% have less than two years left on their current one
• Only 1.2% hold a permanent contract (Parada et al. 2025)

Mobility as the default

• 74.4% of European postdocs have lived in two or more countries since their master’s degree (Parada et al. 2025)
• 54% of Nature’s respondents have moved country to take up a postdoc (Research 2023)
• Mobility is uneven: postdocs in Northern and Western Europe move the most, while 55.8% of those in Southern Europe stay at the institution where they did their PhD (Parada et al. 2025)

The two-body problem

16% of European postdocs live apart from their partner or commute between countries for work (Parada et al. 2025).

“We have one big move left. We won’t move any more for postdocs,” said Manuel Chevalier, after eight years of postdocs in three countries (Nordling 2023a).

Mentorship and career support

• Only 23% of European postdocs feel their institution gives them enough guidance on career options (Parada et al. 2025)
• 36.9% report no career-support office at all; another 23.4% don’t know if one exists (Parada et al. 2025)

Mental health and work-life balance

• 52% of postdocs have considered leaving science because of anxiety, depression, or related concerns (Research 2023)
• In Europe, 52.9% report an imbalance between work and non-work life; 29% rate their balance as bad or very bad (Parada et al. 2025)
• Among those most affected, reasons cluster around precarity: uncertain job opportunities (58.5%), temporary contracts (58.6%), and lack of stable income (41.9%) (Parada et al. 2025)

What stable employment could look like

• Standard employment contracts of a reasonable minimum length, such as two years or longer, rather than serial short-term renewal (Parada et al. 2025)
• Mandatory Sustainable Career Plans for research institutions, modeled on the European Commission’s Gender Equality Plans (Parada et al. 2025)

Aarhus University

Junior VIP and PhD: a job-category gap

At AU, “Junior VIP” covers Assistant Professors, Postdocs, and Researchers, the same career band as Eurodoc’s respondents (Workplace Assessment (WPA) 2025 2025b):

	Senior VIP	Junior VIP	Ph.D.	Total
Happy with job prospects	3.7	3.2	3.5	3.6
Motivated and engaged	4.2	4.0	4.1	4.1

n = 7,172, 78% response rate.

The under-40 pattern

Broken down by age, job-prospect satisfaction dips in the 30-39 band specifically, below both the under-30 and the 40-49 groups, before recovering with seniority (Workplace Assessment (WPA) 2025 2025b):

	Under 30	30-39	40-49	50-59	60+	Total
Happy with job prospects	3.6	3.4	3.6	3.7	3.9	3.6

This mirrors qualitative reporting elsewhere that postdocs in their thirties are more negative than those under 30 about job prospects, job security, and work-life balance (Nordling 2023a).

ANIVET

The local psychological environment

Two of four faculty-specific items score below the department’s overall average (Workplace Assessment (WPA) 2025 2025a):

• 3.2 for the department working with the psychological work environment “in a relevant manner”, the lowest-scoring item
• 3.3 for feeling adequately supported to pursue external funding without undue stress

Junior VIP and PhD in the department

The Junior VIP dip is sharper locally than at AU overall (Workplace Assessment (WPA) 2025 2025a):

	Senior VIP	Junior VIP	Ph.D.	Total
Motivated and engaged	4.3	3.8	4.3	4.1
Rarely stressed to the point of unwellness	3.2	3.1	3.3	3.4

Junior VIP is the only group markedly less motivated than the rest of the department (3.8 vs. 4.1-4.3 elsewhere) and reports the highest stress.

Source: ANIVET WPA 2025, “Results according to job categories,” pp. 48-49. n = 187, 79% response rate.

The open question

Structural, not individual: what can universities do?

References

Dreisoerner, Aljoscha, Vanessa Goetz, David Frohnmayer, Ulrich S. Tran, Martin Voracek, and Urs M. Nater. 2026. “Prevalence and Severity of Mental Health Problems in Early-Career Researchers: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” Nature Human Behaviour, ahead of print. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02505-5.

Nordling, Linda. 2023a. “Falling Behind: Postdocs in Their Thirties Tire of Putting Life on Hold.” Nature 622: 881–83. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03296-9.

Nordling, Linda. 2023b. “Postdoc Career Optimism Rebounds After COVID in Global Nature Survey.” Nature 622: 419–22. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03163-7.

Parada, Filomena, Inês Almeida, Giulia Malaguernera, et al. 2025. Eurodoc Postdoc Survey Report. Eurodoc, The European Council of Doctoral Candidates; Junior Researchers. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15756208.

Research, Nature. 2023. Nature Post-Doctoral Survey 2023. Figshare. https://doi.org/10.6084/M9.FIGSHARE.24236875.

Workplace Assessment (WPA) 2025: 1037 Institut for Husdyr- Og Veterinærvidenskab. 2025a. Aarhus University, Institut for Husdyr- og Veterinærvidenskab.

Workplace Assessment (WPA) 2025: Aarhus Universitet, Total Report. 2025b. Aarhus University.