Is My Pay Really That Bad???

Specialties Travel

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Ok, so as I'm scrolling these forums, I keep seeing posters post things like "$30/hr is normal for a staff nurse", etc.

In Indiana as a RN(BSN) with 3.5 years experience (2 years M/S, 1.5 years Periop), I only make $23/hour... and I was excited about that until I saw these posts! I started at $17.78/hour!

Obviously I'm disillusioned and need to know what a good pay rate to ask for is, because I thought $30/hour would be good...

Sorry for dragging you down :unsure:

Good one!

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I think I may live in the same city as you. I graduate in December and have been wondering myself about pay, negotiating salary, ect. I've heard we're kind of locked in based on experience in this area which is a little scary for a new grad with lots of loans! Congrats on NP school and good luck with what you decide!

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Specializes in burn ICU, SICU, ER, Trauma Rapid Response.
No, you are wrong. Nurses in an area may have no choice. If they don't work, their family does not eat. You have vastly oversimplified reasons for compensation. Supply and demand, unions, local cost of living, and large hospital chains all impact local wages. To the extent some can vote with their feet, that is an individual solution and not suitable for all the poorly paid nurses in the South and Midwest. About 30,000 nurses get to be travelers out of 2.6 million nurses. That is also not possible for all poorly paid nurses.

Yes I oversimplified. You are right about the supply and demand. The whole reason a huge over supply of RNs was created (created using the false NURSING SHORTAGE! propaganda) was to depress nurses compensation and power.

Not long ago nurse's compensation was steadily on the rise. It had to in order continue to attract nurses who had other options. To fix this problem (problem for nurse employers) the glut of nurses was created. What is particularly galling to me is that this over supply was large created using my, and over other tax payer's, money. Hospitals and other moneyed interests where able to lobby money from state and federal governments to create new, and vastly expand current nursing programs. The money used to do with was our tax money.

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Specializes in burn ICU, SICU, ER, Trauma Rapid Response.
Sorry for dragging you down :unsure:

It's bigger than you. But those who entered nursing because they failed to even take a cursory look at the field of nursing and simply believed all of the false nursing shortage propaganda and were shocked to graduate and not find employers lining up to offer them day shift jobs in choice specialty units really do owe an apology.

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Well,I am in homecare and I started at $33/hr but after 7 years pay has dropped to $28/hr.

Employers are blaming it on decreasing reimbursement rates from government programs,namely Medicaid.

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Specializes in burn ICU, SICU, ER, Trauma Rapid Response.
Well,I am in homecare and I started at $33/hr but after 7 years pay has dropped to $28/hr.

Employers are blaming it on decreasing reimbursement rates from government programs,namely Medicaid.

How awful! I am sorry for you. Even if every one of their nurses refused to accept lower pay and quite on the day it took effect, there would be a line of new grads waiting to take their places.

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Specializes in Telemetry.

I'm in the same area as you, OP, (also RN) and after nearly 5 years on the floor, I still made under $19! I hear my old hospital raised their rates a little but the starting pay us still terrible.

Oh, and my one bedroom apartment was 600+ a month - before utilities.

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Specializes in Peri-Op.

I would pack up and move away to someplace that paid better. It is that simple for me. It is not that hard to move on and start over.

At a minimum I would get my license in a higher paying area and go get a medsurg(even if that was all I could do) assignment making more money say in northern Cali. Keep your house locally as a tax base home, visit family when you want to and work 6 months a year making double your current wage.

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I'm in Northeast Indiana. The cost of living here is relatively low (my PITI mortgage payment is $215/Month on a 2 bed/2 bath house with a finished basement. Utilities (Water, Sewer, trash, gas, and electric) are about $150.

For reference. I live in a coastal metro suburban area in the PNW. My mortgage (and mine is low) is $1500, WSGE are $400-500/mo. So you can imagine it'd be quite different making $22/hr here vs where you are.

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It is simple supply and demand. Colleges and universities are falling over themselves to start RN programs, plus all the online schools, plus overseas trained RN's adding into the supply pool. More people looking for the same job pushes down wages. Not right or wrong, just is. HR determines wages by amount of replies to position opening announcements. No replies-too low. Hundreds of replies- too high.

Where i work there are several travelers that live right here and do their contracts where they live, with the allowances, ends up more $ than per diem employees and they have freedom to take long vacations/time off when they want. Plus as they tell me- don't have to get involved in any politics or games.

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Specializes in Med-Surg, LTACH, FNP.
It's bigger than you. But those who entered nursing because they failed to even take a cursory look at the field of nursing and simply believed all of the false nursing shortage propaganda and were shocked to graduate and not find employers lining up to offer them day shift jobs in choice specialty units really do owe an apology.

I get what you're saying, but honestly, what 18 or 19 year old "just outta highschool" college student thinks in those terms, that far out? There may be some, but most of us at that time are learning to just stand on our own two feet and transform into adults.

Furthermore, although I do understand your line of reasoning (and even somewhat agree), it remains merely a negative complaint unless you can propose a sound plan to fix it. As you commented on the home health nurse's post, even if we all did quit, go on strike, etc., the repetitive cycle of the new, naive nurse would simply replace us.

In the mean time, as Ned pointed out, I don't eat. I'd have no income, no ability to pay back my student loans, make my house payment, car payment, and then I'd have more serious issues than just "not getting paid what I deserve."

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Yes I oversimplified. You are right about the supply and demand. The whole reason a huge over supply of RNs was created (created using the false NURSING SHORTAGE! propaganda) was to depress nurses compensation and power.

Not long ago nurse's compensation was steadily on the rise. It had to in order continue to attract nurses who had other options. To fix this problem (problem for nurse employers) the glut of nurses was created. What is particularly galling to me is that this over supply was large created using my, and over other tax payer's, money. Hospitals and other moneyed interests where able to lobby money from state and federal governments to create new, and vastly expand current nursing programs. The money used to do with was our tax money.

I think you are wrong about an oversupply of nurses as well. You may believe that, but where do the facts lie? Nurses in general make more than the median salary in this country by quite a bit. That doesn't happen with an oversupply. It is the relative good pay compared to the educational level required for entry that caused wait lists at every nursing school in the country, not propaganda. It is often the case that supply and demand imbalance corrections cause overshooting of optimal supply, but that has not happened. If you look at the average workload of nurses, you can also readily see that we don't have enough nurses to meet the need. While much blame for that can be placed on the employer (who are also living with competition with other healthcare facilities), unionization, staffing ratio laws, and research demonstrating increased morbidity and mortality with current staffing levels, there is a groundswell of support for better staffing. Now factor in the aging of a large cohort of baby boomer nurses who will be retiring and you have big trouble finding enough nurses.

The same increased average age is true of the general population as well. Who is going to be taking care of these people when large numbers of baby boomers retire and become eligible for Medicare?

You may be basing your belief for your theory on the huge disconnects from the economic downturn starting in 2008. This did indeed obscure the fundamental underlying nursing shortage. Unemployed folks lost their health insurance, and frightened employed workers deferred health care. Frightened retired nurses came back into the workforce.

The contingent workforce industry is like a canary for employment conditions. The number of travel nurses dropped by fully half after 2008 and so did average bill rates for travelers. In the last two years, not only has the industry recovered, but bill rates now exceed those from 2007 by a good bit on average. That doesn't happen with an oversupply.

For staff nurses, pay didn't really drop significantly during the downturn. Large industries do not turn on a dime and there is a lot of lag involved with supply and demand when we are talking about close to 3 million employed nurses. The underlying nursing shortage led to fairly fast moving pay increases in the 1990s that are still having an impact today. Good pay brought men into a field where they are still a minority (including me anecdotally). Until I see real pay start dropping, I'd have to say that on that basis alone, your theory is without merit. While real pay is flat for all workers, it is still rising for nurses. Due to demand.

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