CIfA has a vital role to play in improving and maintaining standards of archaeological work, and in enhancing the status of archaeologists. We believe that inadequate pay and conditions undermines the work we do in these areas and we are keen to ensure that the issue of pay is proactively addressed by the whole sector.

To support the sector, CIfA has committed to undertaking regular salary benchmarking surveys to gather anonymised salary data for a range of job roles in archaeology in the UK. 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 similar roles in equivalent professions. For 2024, this was carried out using data from job adverts in JIST and on BAJR from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024.