Nurses’ salaries are going up

Editor’s note: This post, originally published in January 2017, has been updated with latest information. You can even download ours Nurses’ salary survey report. Nurse.com for more up-to-date salary information. In nursing, wages rose a median of about 1.3% annually from 2008 to mid-2014, and the speed has increased 2.6% annually since then, in line with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The increase over the past two years coincides with a rise in demand for hospital services, said Dr. Peter McMenamin, senior policy adviser for the American Nurses Association. According to the BLS, as the infant boomer generation ages and more people have access to health care because of federal insurance reform, the demand for health care services will proceed to extend through 2024. Here are among the the reason why the BLS projects the nurse employment rate to extend by 16% between 2014 and 2024, which is way faster than the typical for all professions.

“Nurses have more opportunities than ever before,” said Mary Jane Randazzo, MSN, RN, nurse recruiter at Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals in Philadelphia. “Hospitals are creating roles for nurses in areas such as transplant coordination, urgent care, ambulatory care, clinical documentation and care coordination.”

The BLS also predicts that financial pressure on hospitals to discharge patients quickly will end in more admissions to long-term care facilities, ambulatory care facilities, and residential health care facilities. “I see significant growth in nursing positions in home health, case management, hospice, palliative care and health plan evaluation,” said Mary S. McCarthy, RN, associate vp of human resources at MJHS in New York.

Salaries in numbers

According to a recent Medscape report, the typical gross salary for a family physician in 2015 was $79,000, in comparison with $95,000 for a clinical nurse practitioner and $102,000 for a nurse practitioner. Specific averages vary by geographic region, and the report found that RN staff in California earn the best annual wages, at a median of $105,000, followed by those within the Northeast, at $87,000. RNs living within the Southeast and North Central regions earn the bottom annual salaries of $74,000 and $69,000, respectively. Although wages are higher in California and the Northeast, the associated fee of living in these regions is the best within the country, in line with 2016 data from the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center. According to data from Drexel University in Philadelphia, the 2 states where nursing jobs pay higher and are available with a lower cost of living are Michigan and Idaho. According to the BLS, the best average annual wages are offered in nursing positions in ambulatory care facilities, followed by general medical and surgical hospitals, then home health care, physician offices, and expert nursing facilities. According to NurseJournal.org, certified nurse anesthetists, nurse researchers, mental health nurses and authorized nurse midwives are the 4 specialties with the best salaries. According to data from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, academic salaries increased by roughly 8% between 2011 and 2015. In 2015, the typical full-time assistant professor salary within the US was $70,000; According to AACN, an associate professor earned $83,000 and a professor earned $108,000. The Medscape report also showed how wage increases are linked to educational attainment. Nurses who accomplished an RN diploma or associate’s degree program earned a median of $73,000 per 12 months, while BSN nurses earned $79,000. Nurses with a master’s degree earned a median of $87,000 a 12 months, and nurses with a doctoral degree earned about $96,000 a 12 months.

“Work is no longer a job for life. There’s a lot of movement and you don’t have to leave your company to do it.”

How to be a sensible applicant

While salary is very important when applying for a brand new job, Randazzo encourages nurses to seek out the suitable time to ask in regards to the numbers. “Don’t ask before the interview,” she said. “Ask during the interview or when you are offered the position.” At her hospital, recruiters facilitate open communication on the subject by meeting with candidates to debate salary and advantages before interviewing with a hiring manager. “While candidates want to know about compensation, I find they are often even more interested in opportunities for growth and development, such as tuition reimbursement, mentoring opportunities, nurse residency programs and the culture of the work environment,” she said. According to the Medscape report, 69% of advanced practice nurses and 49% of RNs received an education allowance or tuition reimbursement in 2015. Nearly 40% of APRNs and 55% of RNs received reimbursement for his or her certification fees this 12 months. Mary Bylone, MSM, RN, CNML, former board member American Association of Critical Care Nursesbelieves that learning in regards to the work environment is as essential as collecting salary information. She suggests that nurses ask to shadow someone on the unit to get a feel for the work environment. “Money plays an important role, but it doesn’t keep us in position,” she said. For nurses moving to a brand new state, McCarthy suggests contacting recruiters to collect information. “If a new graduate called from out of state and we didn’t have any openings, I would let them know which organizations in the area were hiring new graduates,” she said.

Employees of the long run

Analysts like McMenamin wish to the long run and noting that some of the essential demands in the long run will likely be to herald highly experienced nurses, he said. According to the BLS, nearly 700,000 nurses are expected to retire between 2014 and 2024. While there was a pointy increase within the number of latest graduates entering the workforce, there won’t be enough highly experienced nurses of their 40s and 50s to fill the positions of retiring nurses, he said.

“There could be bidding wars for these nurses, and wages for senior nurses could increase while very experienced nurses remain in short supply,” McMenamin said.

According to the BLS, one specialty that is anticipated to grow significantly is advanced practice nursing. Employment on this specialty will increase 30% from 2014 to 2024 as these nurses provide primary and preventive care to fulfill the care demands of newly insured and aging baby boomers. Randazzo and McCarthy also see many nurses transitioning to latest jobs within the nursing industry, they usually expect that trend to proceed. Randazzo, for instance, began as a nurse at Jefferson Health 34 years ago and later moved on to change into a nurse manager, pool coordinator and now recruiter. “A job is no longer a job for life,” McCarthy said. “There’s a lot of movement and you don’t have to leave your company to do it. I see a significant amount of internal movement. There are so many different areas in nursing and you can spend your entire career in nursing and barely touch a fraction of what is available.”

Key points to recollect:

• Since 2014, nurses’ salaries have increased by 2.6% annually.
• As the infant boomer generation ages and more people have access to health care because of federal insurance reform, the demand for health care services will proceed to grow through 2024.
• Nursing jobs in ambulatory care facilities pay the best average annual wage.
• The average gross salary for an RN in 2015 was $79,000 in comparison with $95,000 for a clinical nurse and $102,000.
• Nurses in search of a job should find the suitable time to ask about salary.
• According to the BLS, nearly 700,000 nurses will retire between 2014 and 2024.
• Advanced practice nursing employment is anticipated to grow 30% between 2014 and 2024 as these nurses provide primary and preventive care.

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