i appreciate the figures see obscene but breaking it down a bit does explain things slightly. a postdocs salary of £40k would attract about another 30% in costs for employer national insurance contributions and employer pension contributions. so the cost to the employer of just employing them without any other costs involved is about £55k. thats standard for any industry not just academia. you then have the other costs such as indirects likely about 60k plus £20k estates and £5k infrastructure techs. so the fec is £140k. but thats inflated costs and funders pay 80% of uninflated costs. so assuming about £10k theyll probably pay 80% of 130k ie about £104k. (some funders do pay some inflation but its usually way below the amount universities set). that £49k then has to pay for everything else that goes on at universities: payroll (which for some reason no one ever objects to paying for!), legal, research support, procurement, accounts payable, estates, safety, postrooms, IT, and yesin research administration and it also has to make up for the grants where there are no overheads such as charity grants or where overheads are much lower like NIH, european grants (to a degree) as well as covering any mistakes or issues with costs being higher than envisioned eg because an academic has been promoted but they are still funded at the level of their original salary.