Gender Pay Gap in Nursing: 2017 Salary Survey vs. 2015?

[allnurses]

In 2015 The Journal of American Medicine released a study on the pay gap between male and female nurses. That survey revealed that male nurses earn about $5100 per year more than women. This survey sparked much interest and dialog as to the reasons for this disparity.

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The new analysis, which included data on more than 290,000 registered nurses, also found that the pay gap had not narrowed within workplace settings and specialties from 1988 to 2013. The new study is the first to have measured gender disparities in pay among nurses over time.

Published in 2016, an allnurses.com survey yielded results also showing the wage gap with men making more per hour than their female coworkers. Is it just about gender or are there other variables that factor into the results?

Women make up 92% of the nursing workforce while men hold only 7.74%, as noted in the allnurses. com 2015 survey. The majority of nurses at the time were paid hourly, 80%, in fact. Men tended toward specialty areas like anesthesiology (with 41% of nurse anesthetists being men), cardiac care, critical care and Emergency room care. The AMA study found that approximately 40 percent of nurse anesthetist are men and were paid on the average $17,290 more annually than female nurse anesthetists.

It seems that one of the main factors that may influence the gender wage gap is that woman take time off to care for family and children. When they return to the workforce they often come back at generally the same pay grade while men have continued working and have received hourly wage increases along the way.

Women are also more apt to regulate their work hours. They seek out opportunities for a more traditional 9-5 nursing job or a shorter work week, again to meet the needs of work/family balance. Men are more likely to take "off hour" opportunities for higher pay and have more overtime on a regular basis.

In the 2017 allnurses Salary Survey nurses were asked to provide the number of regular hours they work per week as well as how many hours of paid overtime they average per week. This data, as well as a breakdown by gender, could shed some additional light on the gender gap in salary.

Men are also known to negotiate salary increases and higher pay rates than women. This accounts for some of the higher wage per hour values noted.

As we are nearing the release of the current (2017) allnurses.com salary results, it will be interesting to see if the gender gap has narrowed over the past year and what the variables will look like! What are some of your thoughts on this finding?

The complete results including interactive graphs are posted now in these 2 articles:

2017 allnurses Salary Survey Results Part 1: Demographics and Compensation

30% of Nurses Leaving the Workforce - 2017 Salary Survey Results Part 2

Resources:

Pay Gap Between Male and Female RNs Has Not Narrowed

Although women dominate the nursing profession, do men make more money?

2015 allnurses Salary Survey Results

[nursegj]

Did I miss something? This should not be about who takes time off for family or anything like that. It should be about equal salary - period. If two nurses, one male, one female have the exact same credentials (i.e. both hold the same degree with comparable work experience) and are hired for the same position with the same responsibilities - they should get the same salary. Those other factors do not apply. If their credentials are different, say one has a higher degree or one has more documented experience, then the salary difference is understandable.

As to the post by Electric Cabbage, I would hope nurses are more intelligent than to be out of the workplace, for whatever reason, and come back expecting to make the same salary as they would if they did not have an interruption in employment. To suggest they "come back to work and complain" about salary is really insulting.

[MunoRN, RN]

nursegj said:

Did I miss something? This should not be about who takes time off for family or anything like that. It should be about equal salary - period. If two nurses, one male, one female have the exact same credentials (i.e. both hold the same degree with comparable work experience) and are hired for the same position with the same responsibilities - they should get the same salary. Those other factors do not apply. If their credentials are different, say one has a higher degree or one has more documented experience, then the salary difference is understandable.

As to the post by Electric Cabbage, I would hope nurses are more intelligent than to be out of the workplace, for whatever reason, and come back expecting to make the same salary as they would if they did not have an interruption in employment. To suggest they "come back to work and complain" about salary is really insulting.

I don't know how you can compare what two people earn in a year without looking at how much they worked during that year. Do you really think someone who works 10 hours a week over the course of a year should end up making the same annual salary as someone doing the same job working 40 hours a week?

[AJJKRN]

AntonioErvin said:

I personally believe that it many women feel obligated to stay home and take care of their families. Many of my female co-workers often say "I take care of other people's family members for living. So ofcourse I am going to take care of my owe family". However many of those same co-workers always make excuses about furthering their education while us men do whatever it takes to achieve more education. I work full-time single father of 3 and I am in school for my MSN, so it can be done.

Again, here's another generalization. I am a female and support three other humans as well and am currently working full time and pursuing a MSN because I want to. I have always worked full time through each nursing degree and have a 3.8/4.0 GPA to boot...even when working for a smudge over minimum wage during my ASN.

[James W.]

Statistical 'fiction' needs to be porificed..

Like, the raw mean/average/median - being applied improperly..

It can be truthfully said that female nurses' total pay is much higher..

..if we add up all the earnings.. divide them by gender..

.. since fewer than 10% of nurses are men..

But that would be an invalid metric analytics-wise..

We need to be sure our 'apples & oranges' are properly applied..

Bottom line, where there is opportunity for pay disparity

on more than the basis of professional merit/service,

then 'all bets are off'..

Do tall attractive blue-eyed blondes get better paid,

in certain areas or roles than a recent Indian immigrant?

Or was the latter primarily employed on

the basis of the acceptance of a lesser pay/conditions

contract, regardless of gender?

Variables cannot be realistically reduced too blithely..

..& seek to retain meaningful validity..

[txla4]

The difference between you and him is that if and when your families decide to expand, you will probably take time off after having a child and he won't. So then, during your maternity leave, he'll be able to say he has x weeks/months more experience than you. During that time, he'll also have the opportunity to keep working toward advancement and you'll come back to the same position you left. That's a built in disadvantage

[nursegj]

Salaries are usually quoted by hourly wage. Check your nursing journals, when employers advertise, the hourly rate is often quoted. By your measure, a nurse who works full-time should have a higher hourly wage than a nurse with the same credentials who works part time since the part-time nurse works less hours in a year. Seriously? I have not heard of part-time nurses getting a lower hourly wage because they work less. Their total take home is less because of less hours but the pay rate should be the same.

[Feelgood RN]

nursegj said:

Salaries are usually quoted by hourly wage. Check your nursing journals, when employers advertise, the hourly rate is often quoted. By your measure, a nurse who works full-time should have a higher hourly wage than a nurse with the same credentials who works part time since the part-time nurse works less hours in a year. Seriously? I have not heard of part-time nurses getting a lower hourly wage because they work less. Their total take home is less because of less hours but the pay rate should be the same.

This is based on a SALARY SURVEY...which is total take home. So if a man were the full time and a woman the part time, and they both had the same exact pay, it would seem as if the pay disparity were almost 100% more for men(if PT were 20hr and FT 40hr). You wouldn't know because it would be based on an entire year, unless the hourly pay were shown somewhere in the survey.

Based on the survey 39% of the people on here should know basic statistics, assuming your BS required the class. ALL statistics can be manipulated to show what you want.

Every place that I've applied to and worked at use a metric for beginning pay that does not include your sex as part of the metric. Years Experience, certifications, licenses, credentials whatever get plugged into a spread sheet and it spits out your pay grade. Everyone with the same overall experience STARTS OUT the same. Whether you are a man or woman and you take leave for your family at some point you will fall behind co workers either in advancement or experience.

So even if myself and Sally started at the same point with the exact same pay and I chose to take leave for a foster child, then maybe my next review I only get a 3% raise while she stayed and received 5%. Lets also say Sally likes night shift, and I hate it so she gets a 5% differential except on weekends she gets 10%. At the end of a couple years of this happening it will appear that Sally has created a salary wage gap. We both started the same and on paper we have the exact same experience and credentials so who's the one creating this UNFAIR predicament?

I'm not arguing that there is a SALARY disparity. It's pretty obvious it doesn't take much to create one, even with the EXACT same ON PAPER "experience". Women don't have a lower minimum wage at McDonalds and in most facilities they don't have a different starting pay based on sex. It is what we as nurses accomplish after being hired and what we put in for work that will determine the gap.

I'm also wondering if there is a section of this survey that can be adjusted for geographical location. I know most of the Southeast has **** nursing pay while the Northeast and West pay great wages. If 80% of female nurses work in the Southeast while 90% of the male nurse population works in the other locations it would EASILY account for SALARY disparity.

I'd like to think we are an intelligent faction of the work force. While I realize some of our profession relies on emotion(empathy, sympathy, maybe apathy on occasion), subjects such as these require us to use our logic. The portion we used to pass A&P and Micro. There are easily 100's of ways pay disparities can occur, simply blaming society is lackadaisical.

[azhiker96, BSN, RN]

I am waiting for the Allnurses survey to be released. By asking a few more questions than just gender and annual income it should be able to discern if there are gender based differences in pay rates. We can also see how any differences vary by state. I think most of any differences will be due to personal choices.

Sure, women do stay home more often than men to care for children or family members. That was not my older brother's choice in the 1970s. He was the stay at home parent while his wife stayed in the workforce.

With increasing acceptance of non-traditional gender roles and relationships people should not feel compelled to make choices based on what the last generation might have done.

I work with a female nurse whose wife is staying at home with their newborn son. In their case, there is no man to blame for time out of the workforce, lost wages, and lost months of experience.

[tnbutterfly - Mary, BSN]

Feelgood RN said:

I'm also wondering if there is a section of this survey that can be adjusted for geographical location. I know most of the Southeast has **** nursing pay while the Northeast and West pay great wages. If 80% of female nurses work in the Southeast while 90% of the male nurse population works in the other locations it would EASILY account for SALARY disparity.

The graphs are interactive. You can select various filters including location, years of experience, gender, specialty,degree, etc.

We have separate graphs for hourly pay and salary pay. You will be able to compare average hourly pay for all hourly paid respondents, full and part time. Annual pay comparisons uses data from only full time respondents and it is based on the amount of income reported to the IRS.

[SmilingBluEyes]

Just for me, I would not be surprised to find I am making less than some men in my position. But like others indicated, it was for me to raise my family first, and be a nurse, second. I worked per diem, for years, kind of slowing my career trajectory. I can't compare myself to men who have kept working full time for the 14 years I did not, men who advanced in their professional careers, or amassed years of experience full-time, raising their pay this way. Now for the exact SAME time, education and experience, I would expect to make the same as the man next to me. Do I?

Well in many work places, the topic of people's salaries is actually discouraged in discussion; that kind of makes it tough to compare exactly and accurately. No one is required to tell me what they make, and most don't, observing the rule of non-disclosure. ( I personally dislike such policies and in the union environment, we all knew who made what----that is a topic all of its own for discussion).

I guess I don't know where I am going except to say, I CHOSE to slow my career progression by taking a lot of time to raise and homeschool my kids, putting my husband's military career first.

And that is on me.

[tyvin, BSN, RN]

The problem I have with this is that it indicates that the hourly wage is different when it's not. This is 2017; women can stay home or not, or men can stay home or not. Are we going to pick it apart to the extent that PC language is the only thing people understand? I have never heard of,nor have I seen any man, or known any man who got more per hour than a women in nursing: never...or waiting on tables or bartending.

I bet the libs would argue about the bartending saying women are weaker and can't fill the drinks fast enough therefore not making the same tips as the male bartender (though that's absolutely untrue), unequal pay! Statistics: give me any subject and I can come up with equal stats for and against. Any good writer knows this.

Also, in the world of business you get what you are worth: that's in experience, education and dedication. It's the Nancy Pelosi's and Maxine Waters of this world where they are making more than any man within a 200 mile radius that cry the loudest about unequal pay...it simply does not exist in our world anymore. With the liberal agenda; everything's a problem

It's like the female actress was complaining when she found out her male costar was getting more money. She was an unknown just starting out and the other actor was one of the more famous actors in Hollywood. Than they started this equal pay for equal work! So, what we are saying here is new RN graduates should get the same as RN IIIs or let's go with the RN IV wage...better, yea. So much liberal crap...excuse me, I have to run to the bathroom

[Garden,RN, ASN, RN]

You are correct. I took time to raise my children and ended up at square one. This is the same in other fields as well. Considering the study says that 93% of our workplace is female, if there is a gender gap we females are to blame no? Also, being a field that is 93% female, why haven't we made it more family friendly?